professional photographer and entrepreneur, was a partner in a Portrait Saloon at 230 Pitt Street, Sydney, where he and a Mr Taylor exhibited stereoscopic magic lantern slides as well as taking photographic portraits. In February 1860 they converted the saloon into a 'mechanical theatre’, based on Thiodon’s London original, which presented two 'scenic displays’: the recovery of relics from Sir John Franklin’s artic expedition and views of ships at sea. Taylor also sang several songs during the performance.
By the following year, Morris was sole proprietor of the business, now styled the London Portrait Saloon and Rifle Gallery. In May 1862 he was trying to sell the contents of this 'celebrated’ establishment together with some of his household furniture, having, he said, purchased property on the Lachlan River. The sale included 'large and small sized Cameras, Photographic cases, Chemicals of every possible and useful description’, oil paintings, and 'A rare collection of the Wellington Engravings, coloured, the only set in the colony’, statuettes, and stuffed and live talking birds. In February 1863 the gallery itself was for sale.
Morris was still at Sydney in August, offering lessons in photography from 21 Hunter Street. In 1864-65 his studio was at 251 Pitt Street (perhaps the original, unsold premises). He held a grand opening in February 1864 with a display of the 'Greatest novelty in Sydney’, a life-size photographic self-portrait: 'THOUSANDS have seen it … Go & see if it is like me’. 'MISTAKEN IDENTITY – Numbers of people take the large photograph for MORRIS himself’. Such flamboyance seems to have brought success. Morris’s opening salvo was followed in September-October by a group of similarly lively announcements, such as, 'Did you see my portrait? Isn’t it a beauty? MORRIS took it. 8 for 10s.’ and 'I say, what a Business that MORRIS is doing – crowded every day. 8 Portraits 10s.’ But the crowds (if they existed) soon thinned. Morris was at Kiama on the south coast later in the year, travelling around the district taking portraits.
He took Henry J. Billing into partnership at the beginning of 1865 and the advertisements became far more sober, although the Pitt Street address and the price of cartes-de-visite remained the same. By 1866 Morris and Billing had renamed their studio the London Saloon, an echo of its original name without the Shooting Gallery. This more decorous establishment seems to have been short-lived. A carte-de-visite portrait of Blanket, the Aboriginal body-servant of Sir John Robertson, was taken at Morris and Billing’s gallery on 21 September 1866, and the studio appears to have closed soon afterwards.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
