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watercolour painter and professional photographer, produced daguerreotypes at Melbourne in 1847-49, advertising that he worked slowly, was expensive, opened only between 11 and 3 and closed during the winter until fine weather returned. He was extremely successful, largely because of a more appealing fact invariably included in his advertisements: that he was the (younger) brother of William Edward Kilburn of London, 'Photographic Artist to H.B.M. the Queen’. He was also a very competent daguerreotypist. The portraits of the Aboriginal people of the Yarra Yarra tribe he took in 1847 were used as the basis for illustrations in William Westgarth’s Australia Felix (Edinburgh 1848) and re-appeared, re-drawn, as engravings in the Illustrated London News of 26 January 1850. A splendid daguerreotype of an Aboriginal man, woman and child by Kilburn (1847) is held by the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1849 Kilburn moved to Sydney where he established a considerable reputation for his coloured daguerreotype portraits of white settlers. A notice in the Sydney Morning Herald on 18 September 1849 called them superior to anything previously seen in Australia and particularly complimented him on the colour of the flesh, drapery and backgrounds which gave the portraits 'a verisimilitude and beauty which are quite delightful’. One of his Sydney patrons, the merchant Alexander Brodie Spark, had his step-daughter Alicia Radford taken in January 1850 to commemorate her 21st birthday.

The following month Kilburn advertised that he had booked a passage in the Waterloo for London where he intended to study the latest developments in photography with his brother. Hitherto William had been keeping Douglas supplied with photographic equipment and chemicals, a major advantage when these were so frequently in short supply in the colonies. Douglas’s farewell advertisement stated that he hoped to revisit New South Wales the following year, but it was to Tasmania that he went on his return. In 1853 he demonstrated stereoscopic photography (in both daguerreotype and calotype form) at Hobart Town – the first practical, public demonstration of the stereoscope known to have been held in any of the Australian colonies. In December he delivered a paper 'On Sun Pictures by the Calotype Process’ to the Royal Society of Van Diemen’s Land, in which he explained that his purpose was 'only to make public…the process which I have myself employed in the production of a few calotype views of Hobart Town &c., submitted for inspection at a late meeting of the society’. He explained his methods, equipment and techniques in great detail and recommended view photography as an easier alternative to taking portraits of 'nervous and fidgety sitters’.

In 1854 the Victorian government geologist Alfred Selwyn included nine daguerreotype views by Kilburn among the works he sent to the Melbourne Exhibition in preparation for the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. D.T. Kilburn himself showed five calotypes at Paris in the Tasmanian Court. They had been framed in Tasmanian wood by R.V. Hood of Hobart Town and all were views of local landmarks: St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, the new market on the Hobart Town waterfront, St David’s Church of England, the Bank of Australasia and, less predictably, the 'residence of D.T. Kilburn, Esq., Davey Street’. Kilburn added an apologetic note to his catalogue entry which stated: 'These views have been taken by the exhibitor in order to show the substantial nature and architectural finish of the buildings, as well as the regularity of the streets composing the city of Hobart Town; and not with any desire to compete with the production of European artists whose means and appliances are so much more complete than even the most liberal of amateurs can command at the antipodes …’.

Wood engravings after Kilburn’s calotype views were mentioned in the Hobart Town Courier of 27 December 1854 and the Hobart Town Advertiser of 6 January 1855, both newspapers commenting on the suitability of the process (salted paper prints) for engraving. Kilburn’s view of the Hutchins School was engraved for the Churchman’s Almanack of 1855 'at the request of the Bishop of Tasmania’, F.R. Nixon , another photographer. Four photographs of Aborigines were shown at the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition, two in the watercolour category and two in the section reserved for sculpture and photography. Presumably the former (portraits of two Aboriginal women) would have been hand-painted paper prints, the latter daguerreotypes or ambrotypes. In May 1861 he showed dissolving views at the New Town orphan schools. According to Cato, Kilburn was a talented watercolourist who did many independent landscape paintings as well as hand-painting many of his photographs.

Kilburn became a man of substance in Tasmania. His considerable property was assumed at the time to have been purchased with the fortune he amassed from his mainland photographic practice. When proposing to leave Tasmania in 1855 he had a long list of properties for sale and by 1861 a yacht, Phantom . He served in the Tasmanian House of Representatives as member for Hobart Town from May 1861 to May 1862, resigning his seat in order to accept an offer of employment with the Melbourne Argus . He returned to Tasmania when he retired (c.1870) and died at Hobart Town on 10 March 1871, survived by his wife Anna Maria, née Patterson, two sons and two daughters.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011