painter, lithographer and teacher, was born in Hamburg, Germany, son of Philip Lang, a tailor, and Caroline, née Inzenhöfer. He studied under the noted lithographic artist Wilhelm Heuer of Hamburg and served his apprenticeship at the Hamburg Lithographic Institute. Afterwards he resided at Altona, then returned and set up his own studio in Hamburg. In 1859 he was recruited by Augustus Schuhkrafft to work as a lithographic artist in the Victorian printing and stationery firm of Schuhkrafft & Howell; he arrived at Melbourne in the Great Britain in February 1860.
Lang served with the firm until early 1863 then struck out on his own, continuing to use Schuhkrafft’s as his business address. He opened his own studio at 60 Little Collins Street East in mid 1864 where he taught figure, landscape and ornamental drawing (as well as writing) in addition to his work as a commercial lithographic artist. The business was not successful and Lang joined the printers Fergusson & Mitchell in 1867. He worked there until about 1870 when he set up an Academy of Drawing and Music, first in Dover Street, Richmond (c.1870/1872), then at Prahran. This survived until 1877. Then he joined Sands & McDougall, publishers of the Melbourne Directory , as head lithographic artist. He spent eight years with this firm and some of his most attractive work was done there, in particular his chromolithographic reproductions of watercolour and oil paintings selected for the Art Union of Victoria between 1877 and 1883. Early in 1885 Lang left Sands & McDougall. After a very brief partnership with John Batten in Queen Street, he set up his own studio, also in Queen Street, and subsequently in Little Collins, Elizabeth and Collins streets. From 1901 to 1905 he worked in a temporary capacity as a lithographic artist in the Government Printing Office, then retired from active work. He died on 7 July 1919 at Malvern and was buried in the Brighton Cemetery.
Lang was not involved in any fine art society, nor is he known to have publicly exhibited any independent art work, despite being for a time drawing master at several Melbourne ladies’ colleges. He was foundation president of the Victorian Lithographic Artists and Engravers Club from 1889 to at least 1891 and an active member of the Melbourne Deutsche Liedertafel from its foundation in 1868, then of its successor the Melbourne Liedertafel until 1886. Little original art work is known or recorded, although he was undoubtedly the Mr Lang who painted the 11 × 9 foot (3.35 × 2.49 m) transparency displayed by his employers, Fergusson & Mitchell, during the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne in 1867. The Argus described it as 'representing Victoria and Great Britain shaking hands, Victoria with left hand holding the Southern Cross, and England holding the Union Jack; in the centre the Galatea coming up the bay; these figures surrounded by flowers, fruit, &c.; at one side the rose, shamrock, and thistle; the whole surmounted by the arms of the Duke’. Two watercolours signed L. Lang are presumably also his: Kerarbury Home Station, Murrumbidgee R., N.S.W. (ML) and Aboriginal Campsite, 1911 (Leonard Joel, November 1979).
In 1872 Lang lithographed and published the sheet music for Victoria March with a decorated title-page. He designed the cover for the Illustrated Australian Family Almanac for 1873 and executed four lithographic portraits (from photographs) for the 1874 Almanac . He lithographed portraits for Rev. James Fenton’s The Life and Work of the Reverend Charles Price First Independent Minister in Australia (Melbourne, 1886) and many of the lithographed portraits in Leavitt & Libburn’s Jubilee History of Victoria and Melbourne (Melbourne, 1888), as well as vignettes on the title-page of H. Thomas’s Guide to Excursionists between Australia and Tasmania (1883, 1884). Lang also produced a large number of illuminated addresses, five examples of which are in the La Trobe Library. That presented to the mayor of Oakleigh in 1891 (purchased 1987) features a highly-coloured bush scene and a vignette of a settlement in muted tones like a sepia photograph. Earlier addresses produced by Lang when he was working for Sands & MacDougall were presumably unsigned – most were – and have not been identified.
- Writers:
- Darragh, Thomas A.
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
