professional photographer and photolithographer, was taking photographs at the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in 1864. Two years later he was at Sturt Street, Ballarat in partnership with Thomas Flintoff . At the beginning of 1873 Flintoff and Deveril opened a studio at 11 Royal Arcade, Melbourne. In the interim Deveril had worked in the Victorian government’s Photolithography Department under John Noone , an experience which led to the offer of the position of officer in charge of the new Photolithographic Department in the Government Printing Office at Wellington (New Zealand). Leaving Australia forever, he arrived at Wellington in S.S. Rangitoto with his wife and five children on 7 June 1873. By the end of 1876 the New Zealand office under Deveril had produced 488,193 photolithographs of all sizes from octavo to 4 × 3 feet (121 × 91 cm).
Despite that volume of work, Deveril simultaneously held the position of New Zealand government photographer. A series of photographs he produced for the Ministry of Works was shown by the New Zealand government at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial, the 1879 Sydney International and the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibitions. The set now in the General Assembly Library (Wellington, NZ) was acquired from Australia and presumably is that exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne. Included are views and panoramas of New Zealand scenery, government buildings, trains and bridges, and Maori people including a portrait of a (resentful) bare-breasted, reclining Wahine taken during an expedition to Taupo and Rotorua, one in the series 'the Maori in his natural habitat’. He used a 14 × 11 inch (35.5 × 27.9 cm) camera to produce large-format photographs, which were quite distinctive in New Zealand at the time.
Claiming vice-regal patronage, Deveril opened his own studio at Wellington in 1879. He continued to produce large-format landscape photographs from his horse-drawn travelling darkroom van (included in several photographs) as well as studio portraits, e.g. Mrs Henderson (Main Collection, Wellington), but seems to have had financial problems almost from the first. By August 1880 he was working for another photographer, J. Bragge. On his own again by 1882, he was bankrupt in October. In about 1884 Deveril left Wellington for Auckland, where he is listed as a photographer until 1891. Collections of his New Zealand photographs are in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, and the Parliamentary Library, Wellington.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
