painter and lithographer, arrived at Melbourne in late 1857 and was introduced to the members of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts by his friend William Strutt . Said to have had a long-standing connection with some of the principal schools of design in England, Aresti was hoping to supply the society with copies of the schools’ chromolithographs which he had brought out with him. He was immediately voted onto the committee.
Listed in the Melbourne Directory for 1859, 1863 and 1866 67, Aresti was initially called a 'lithographer and artist’, then just an 'artist’. He worked from various addresses in Collingwood and Fitzroy. In the Victorian Exhibition held at Melbourne in 1861 in preparation for the 1862 London International Exhibition, he showed a Masonic Painting and 'An Example of the New Process of Preparing Painted or Washed Drawings on Stone; also Examples of Granulations of a Novel Character, developed since it was exhibited at Paris. Exhibited by the Inv. [Inventor]’. For these achievements he was locally awarded a first class certificate. In the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts, also held at Melbourne in 1861, Aresti’s Alfred in the Danish Camp, Painted on Stone was listed in the watercolour section of the catalogue but it appears to have been a chromolithograph, like his earlier 'Example’. If so, these were exceptionally early experiments in the process; Nicholas Chevalier was awarded a medal in 1866 for introducing chromolithography into the colony.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
