Design and Art Australia Online

From Dictionary of SA Photography 1845-1915
R. J. Noye

ANSON, Henry
When Dr Benjamin Frankis came to Adelaide from England in 1850 he brought with him his nephew, Henry Anson, who had been born in Bristol, England, in 1838. Doctor Frankis established a medical practice in Adelaide and Henry was apprenticed to him as a chemist. On 17 August 1861 Henry Anson married Emily Louisa Francis, daughter of George Francis, first director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Two of his brothers-in-law, Arthur and William A. Francis, became professional photographers.

By January 1863 Henry Anson was practising photography, his photographs of the John McDouall Stuart demonstration being for sale at Mullett’s stationery shop in Rundle Street.64 The following month Henry was advertising his Adelaide Photographic Institution at 45 Rundle Street, which was open from 11 am to 4 pm. He was making portraits on glass for 2s 6d, stereoscopic photographs, cartes de visite, vignette portraits, and could take views in both the city and country areas. He also provided what would have been an unusual service for the time, making photographic prints from negatives made by amateur photographers. He made and sold his own brand of collodion, along with other photographic chemicals guaranteed to be of ‘absolute purity’.65
The Adelaide Photographic Institution had moved to 97 Rundle Street by December 1863, and Henry Anson had taken his brother-in-law, William Augustus Francis (q.v.), as partner. On 3 December they advertised their new style of coloured photograph which, they claimed, ‘for accuracy of portraiture and artistic effect have hitherto been unequalled in this colony’. The photographs were painted with water colours by A.B. (Gus) Peirce, a photographer who had recently arrived from Melbourne.66
In March 1864 Anson & Francis photographed George Hamilton’s series of drawings called Life of the Australian Horse, which were described as ‘eleven sketches [that represent] a complete history of the Australian horse from the period of his entire freedom to the last stage of equine bondage.67 They may have supplied the photographic prints which were inserted as real photograph illustrations in Hamilton’s books for horse owners, published in 1864 and 1866, and therefore could have been the first in Australia to provide original photographs for books.68
In July 1864 Anson & Francis announced that, as a result of repeated requests for album views, they had photographed nearly all the public buildings ‘in and adjacent to the City of Adelaide’. These photographs, they said, were of carte de visite size, and ‘especially suitable for transmission by mail to England’.69

In a full-page advertisement in the directory for 1865, Anson & Francis (Adelaide Photographic Institution) said they now had 4,000 registered carte de visite negatives on file from which copies could be made at a reduced rate, by forwarding the number written on the card. When orders for six or more cartes de visite were received, they made two negatives from which proofs were supplied for selection, and if neither met with approval they were prepared to continue making negatives until the customer was satisfied. A printed form was used to confirm the date and time of appointments.

Anson & Francis also had for sale a large collection of portraits of South Australian natives and stereoscopic views of colonial scenery, and claimed they had the largest camera in the colony for taking photographs of scenery and gentlemen’s residences.

By January 1866 only W.A. Francis was named as proprietor in advertisements for the Adelaide Photographic Institution, and it may have been about this time that Henry Anson changed occupations to become a traveller for Bickford & Son, the chemists. He was listed as a traveller, Hindley Street, in directories for 1868–70. In October 1866 he had applied for the position of Government Photo-lithographer, but was not successful.70
At this point it is not clear what happened to the Adelaide Photographic Institution. William Francis may have given up the business, as Thomas Jackson advertised in January 1867: ‘Mr Jackson having purchased the whole stock of negatives belonging to Messrs Anson & Francis, is now prepared to supply parties with duplicates of the same at reasonable rates’.71
Henry Anson moved to Kadina where he advertised in the Wallaroo Times on 13 March 1867 that he taken F.W. Elliott’s dispensary, where he would carry on business as a chemist, druggist and stationer. However, he must have moved back to Adelaide later in the year and briefly revived the Adelaide Photographic Institution, as the National Directory for 1867–68, probably published in late 1867, carries an advertisement which says: ‘First-class portraits … at H. Anson’s Adelaide Photographic Institution, 97 Rundle Street, Adelaide’.

There is also a diamond cameo portrait, a style of carte de visite introduced to Adelaide in April 1865, made by the Adelaide Photographic Institution under the name of H. Anson, not Anson & Francis, and the negative number on the card is much later than those seen on cartes made by Anson & Francis.

At the age of 31, and perhaps possessed by the spirit of adventure, Henry Anson left South Australia in June 1868 to try his luck on the goldfields in Queensland. He travelled from Wallaroo to Newcastle on the SS Kadina, then by the City of Morpeth to Sydney from where he sailed for Brisbane on 12 July aboard the Lady Bowen. In the company of friends Henry walked to the Gympie diggings over rough bush tracks, only to find most of the gold had been worked out.

At one stage he found employment with a tobacconist–photographer named Mueller, and some of Henry’s photographs of the primitive early settlement with its rough bush shacks and tidier public buildings have survived. Returning to Brisbane he sailed for Sydney on the SS Brisbane, and after a ‘rough but rapid passage’ of three days, reached Sydney Harbour. From there it was on to Melbourne on the City of Adelaide, then to Adelaide on the Coorong. Henry wrote, ‘full of hope we left, like the proverbial bad penny we returned’. All Henry brought back was enough gold to make a ring for his wife and the stories of his experiences to relate to his children.72
In October 1868, while Henry was away and apparently without his knowledge, Bernard Goode (q.v.) applied on his behalf for the position of photographer on the South Australian Government expedition to the Northern Territory, another opportunity for adventure.

In his letter to G.W. Goyder, Surveyor General, Bernard Goode said: I beg to submit to your favourable notice Mr H. Anson … as a steady industrious photographer and one well up in all its branches. I might say that as his work will be chiefly views, that he took the prize at the New Zealand Exhibition for the best collection of views shown. He is at present at the Gympie Creek diggings … I have sent this quite on my own responsibility but should you think there is any chance of his being appointed I will find means to communicate with him …
and get him over here at once.73

Henry was not appointed to the position, but when he returned from the diggings he was given work in the portrait department of Goode’s Rundle Street studio. This, said Goode, would allow his other staff to concentrate on outdoor photography, transparencies for the magic lantern, and photographic enlargements, ‘which latter style of portrait they are producing by an entirely new process … up to life size’.74

By January 1873 Henry Anson was back on the Peninsula as a chemist. The Adelaide firm of Bickford & Sons, for whom Henry had worked as a traveller, acquired William Hartley’s chemist shop at Kadina and installed Henry as their manager.75 Later that year he branched out on his own, erecting his own chemist shop in Taylor Street, which must have had a photographic studio attached.

The studio eventually claimed too much of his time, so in August 1879 he employed Matthew Mitchell (q.v.) as an operator in what he advertised as ‘The Taylor-Street Photographic Studio, H. Anson proprietor’.76 The chemist side of his business was known as the Kadina Medical Hall.
While at Kadina Henry Anson often gave lectures and magic lantern entertainments. In May 1881 he gave an ‘interesting and instructive’, lantern show to the scholars attending Mr R. Willshire’s school at Wallaroo Mines. ‘The views exhibited were varied in character … astronomical, botanical, and zoological, besides photographic views of scenes in and around Paris …

Mr Anson described each picture as it was shewn in a brief and intelligent manner … The last picture thrown on the screen was the photo of Mr R. Willshire, taken by Mr Mitchell, and the children at once called out the name of their schoolmaster.’77

On 12 May 1883 the Wallaroo Times reported: The numerous friends of Mr Anson, of Kadina, will regret to learn that he is about to leave the district. During his residence in Kadina he has been known as a man of strict integrity. He was ever ready to lend a hand in matters which interested, or were for the benefit of the town.

He has from the first taken a lively interest in the affairs of the Yorke’s Peninsula Agricultural Society, of which he is vice-president … In all charitable movements, also, he has been ever to the front; and in numerous entertainments … no name was more welcome on the programme than that of Mr Anson. Professionally he was a man of wide experience, and he will be greatly missed by the scores of persons who at times are troubled with small ailments, which, although not serious enough to necessitate the calling in of a doctor, require relief. In this respect there has never been a chemist on the Peninsula who possessed a larger share of public confidence. The district can ill afford to lose such men.78

Fifty gentlemen were present at a farewell held in the Wombat Hotel, where Henry was presented with an illuminated address, a purse containing seventy sovereigns, and an inscribed locket.
After leaving Kadina Henry Anson took Charles Downer’s chemist shop on North Parade, Port Adelaide, but when this location proved unsuitable he moved to a shop in St Vincent Street. Henry died in June 1893, leaving a widow, three sons and five daughters.
61 Australian Photographic Journal, July 1902.
62 Kapunda Herald, 23 January 1903.

63 Kapunda Herald, 11 August 1905.

64 South Australian Register, 23 January 1863.
65 South Australian Register, 16 February 1863.
66 Advertiser, 2 December 1863; South Australian Register, 3 December 1863.

67 South Australian Register, 23, 29 March 1864.

68 Joan Kerr (ed.), Dictionary of Australian artists, painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 180, attributes these photographs to Frazer S. Crawford, with Townsend Duryea named as another possibility. There is also a reference to them on p. 344.

69 South Australian Register, 12 July 1864.

70 PRO, GRG 35, SGO 965/1866, SGO 1161/1866.

71 South Australian Register, 31 January 1867.
72 A long account of Henry Anson’s experiences at the Gympie goldfields and two of his photographs appeared in Brisbane’s Sunday Mail Colour Magazine, 6 August 1972. A brief article was also published in the journal of the Gympie & District Historical Society, July 1981.

73 PRO, GRG 35, SGO 1185/1868. B. Goode to Goyder, 23 October 1868.
74 South Australian Register, 30 July 1869.

75 Yorke Peninsula Advertiser, 3 January 1873.
76 Wallaroo Times, 30 August 1879.

77 Wallaroo Times, 9 May 1883.

Writers:

Staff Writer
marigold

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2017