painter and/or engraver, is listed in directories from 1858 to 1861 as George F. Price, an artist of 37 Market Street, Melbourne. He was, however, in Victoria from at least 1856, when the Argus reported that he had completed a View of Melbourne 'taken from a spot on the road leading to the Benevolent Asylum…the first attempt we remember to have seen to depict Melbourne in oil colours’. When Price exhibited his view, together with two unnoticed oil portraits of unnamed women, with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts the following year the Age admired his vigorous style but complained that the foreground was 'very carelessly painted’. Dandenong Ranges from Nine Mile Beach was for sale at the Geelong Mechanics Institute exhibition in 1857.
At the 1860 Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts Price showed a pencil or crayon 'Composition’ and three oil paintings: Hut of Kangaroo Killers, King’s Station, near Western Port and two portraits, again of unidentified women. James Neild of the Examiner praised the effectiveness of his 'rough sketchy style’ in Hut of Kangaroo Killers , which he thought indicated rather than expressed 'the ragged irregular appearance of the gum-trees’, but advised him not to attempt portraits as his style was suited only to 'rough Australian scenes’.
He may also be the artist called Price whose oil painting, A Great Difficulty , was shown by R. White at the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition and/or the 'F.’ Price of 2 George Street, Fitzroy, catalogued as showing Out of the Kitchen Window at the Victorian Exhibition preceding the 1873 London International Exhibition. An artist called Frederick Price began his Melbourne career as an illustrator and engraver on Thomas Ham 's Illustrated Australian Magazine , published 1850-52. Darragh notes that while at 59 Swanston Street, Melbourne, in the 1850s, Frederick Price republished Ham’s 1843 engraving, Instruments used by the Aborigines of Victoria Australia Felix .
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
