Design and Art Australia Online

painter, illuminator and businessman, was born in London on 14 October 1837, son of Luigi Guiseppe Stefenoni, an Italian expatriate upholsterer who had settled at Holborn, London, and his second wife Sophia Elizabeth, née Samweis (later Samways), a German Jew. After his shop burnt down, the family moved to the Isle of Man. There, from the age of sixteen, Lewis worked for the Royal Navy as a designer and embroiderer of badges. He probably worked his way to Australia as crew, arriving at Sydney on 9 November 1852 (according to family records). He lived in the Coles Building, Argyle Place and by 1862 was working as an artist in the advertising department of the Sydney Morning Herald . He painted the Herald building’s transparencies for 11 June 1863, when Sydney celebrated the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Illuminated with between 500 and 600 sperm-candles in the windows and with cauldrons on the roof spurting flames, the building was considered (by the Herald reporter) one of the outstanding 'manifestations of loyalty’ in the city. Steffanoni’s transparencies – covering the five front windows on the first floor – were said to have excited the most interest of all. They included the royal portraits, Britannia beckoning to a Danish ship ('Welcome Rose of Denmark’) and a seraph unrolling a scroll bearing a quote from Tennyson.

Steffanoni married John Fairfax’s niece Sarah Ann Reading in April 1869, then went into partnership with his mother-in-law Ann Reading and his brother-in-law, William, in a fancy-goods shop. Reading Son & Steffanoni at 92 Market Street imported 'Berlin wools, Traced goods [and] glass shades’, as the sign over their door proclaimed. Clocks, bullion, statuary and other goods imported from Italy were also part of the stock. The Steffanonis had two sons and three daughters, their second daughter, Sophia Elizabeth (known as Sophie) becoming a professional bullion embroiderer and oil painter. Their private residence was Brighton House, Carrington Street.

The illuminated addresses Steffanoni continued to produce during his business life were displayed in his shop windows. He may also have been associated with the Sydney printers and publishers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. An illuminated address for James Fairfax was commissioned by employees at the Herald to mark his departure for Europe in the steamer Bombay in 1865, and a note in one of Steffanoni’s albums claims he was responsible for at least ten of the numerous addresses congratulating the Duke of Edinburgh on his recovery from attempted assassination at Sydney in 1868. Royalty in any form was exceptionally good for business. Steffanoni painted several transparencies in 1868 for city business premises as part of the decorations welcoming the unfortunate Prince Alfred to Sydney. Three were allegorical (one showed the Duke in a chariot driven by Neptune with sea-horses and mermaids abounding) and two featured native Australian flora alongside the rose, shamrock and thistle. He had earlier illuminated an address which, set in an elaborately chamfered Oxford frame, was presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of the death of the Prince Consort. An address he illuminated for Sydney’s German residents to send to the Emperor of Germany and Prince Bismarck was mentioned in the Cologne Gazette in 1875, the Sydney Morning Herald proudly reported.

Steffanoni’s earliest known illumination, decorated with geometrical patterns, was done in 1862 for presentation to Francis Semhill, manager of the Commercial Banking Company’s branch at Muswellbrook, on his departure for Sydney. Those of the 1870s included presentations to Henry Parkes (from the citizens of Dubbo), Morgan O’Connor and the former King of Fiji, Ratu Chamian Vunivalu (from the Wesleyan Church). The last included a view of Levuka and was engrossed in both Fijian and English. All seem to have been photographed and preserved in albums, two of which survive in family possession.

Since the photograph of Steffanoni’s 1874 address to Rev. William Curnow from his York Street Circuit congregation is signed by the Sydney photographer J.T. Gorus , it is possible that the others, unsigned, were also taken by him, probably as a commercial venture to sell as souvenirs to those who had paid for the original presentation. For instance, the photograph of Steffanoni’s 1874 illuminated address to Thomas Brown , police magistrate in the Hartley and Bowenfels district, is annotated: 'Photos of Brown’s address 5s 9d each painted, 4s 9d each not painted – 12 to be taken for certain’. (The address itself with a painted vignette of Brown’s home, Cooerwull, still in the family, cost 25 guineas, frame extra.)

At the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition Steffanoni won a bronze medal for his illuminated address presented by the Prince Alfred Yacht Club to J. Gay Hanks, their commodore. One of his most elaborate works, it cost 60 guineas plus £7 for the frame and was painted in oils on vellum (rather than parchment), the preferred medium for important works. It also employed a considerable quantity of gold leaf. The central painting depicts the 'Yacht for Commodore’s Cup March 19 1870’, and smaller vignettes of yachts are added down the sides. His large 1876 illuminated address to William Laidley from the miners, chairman, secretary and delegate 'on behalf of the employees and friends’ of the Co-operative Colliery, Wallsend, near Newcastle NSW (ML), includes a view of the colliery, the miners’ huts, a coal-miner at work and the Gothic Revival Public School for the miners’ children, which Laidley had sponsored.

Steffanoni was a council member of the NSW Academy of Art from 1872 to 1876 and compiled the catalogue for its first (1872) exhibition. Sands Directory for 1877 lists him as an illuminator at Wynyard Terrace, Wynyard Square. As well as illuminated addresses, he painted oil and watercolour views and marine scenes throughout his life. He exhibited an oil painting of the Weatherboard Falls at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. Some of his paintings (mainly landscapes and seascapes) survive in family possession, including a monotone watercolour depicting the wreck of the Dunbar in 1857. He died at Sydney on 29 May 1880, aged forty-three. His widow, left to support the young family, opened a boarding-house, Brighton House at 31 Grosvenor Square, Church Hill, where she continued the embroidery side of the business, advertising as Madame Steffanoni , 'Art Needlework and Gold Embroiderer’.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011