Design and Art Australia Online

painter, illuminator, engrosser and art teacher, was possibly Emmanuel John Dominic Myers, son of Prussian Jews Bartholomew and Dorothy Myers, who on 17 February 1855, giving his occupation as storekeeper, married Mary Ann Dagg in the Perth Roman Catholic Cathedral, Western Australia, the groom having been baptised a Catholic the previous year at the age of twenty-eight. The following year they had a son, Julius Edward. No appropriate adult Catholic baptism seems to have been recorded in Perth and the former Jewish storekeeper sounds very much like Edward Myers , the Jewish storekeeper and illuminator who disappeared from Hobart Town about this time. In any case, this Myers/Meyers was extremely capricious about his name.

After his conversion, Emmanuel John Dominic Myers seems to have added an 'e’ to his surname, dropped his two middle names and acquired a Christian name to use for the rest of his professional life. Although the evidence is not at all conclusive that the two were one and the same, one 'Maximilian E. Meyers’ appears from nowhere at Perth at this time advertising that he was opening an evening school for students desirous of learning 'the art of drawing and watercolouring’ and was 'at leisure to undertake the taking of portraits in either oil or watercolours on reasonable terms’. A month later he went into partnership with painter Eugene Miller Bird , but this did not last long. On 2 July 1857, Mr and Mrs 'E. J. D.’ Myers and son left for South Australia in the Lochinvar . 'M. E.’ Meyers was in New South Wales by 30 November 1859 – the date of an illuminated and engrossed address presented to Thomas John Brown, superintendent of the Sydney Insurance Companies’ Fire Brigade. A lithographic copy published by Grocott, Ward & Ward as a souvenir for those making the presentation was retrieved from a time capsule uncovered during the demolition of the Fire Brigade’s old premises in Bathurst Street, opposite St Andrew’s Cathedral (Royal Australian Historical Society). Included among its decorations is an outline drawing of four galloping horses pulling the fire-truck.

In 1866-69 M.E. Meyers was working from 75 Collins Street, Melbourne. Calling himself 'Calligrapher, Illuminator and Designer/ Master of Writing and Professor of the Fine Arts’, he stated in an 1869 advertisement that the new Mining Map of Victoria he had compiled and drawn had won a prize at the 1866-67 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. (M.E. Meyers appears in the catalogue as an exhibitor of ornamental penmanship and heraldic painting; the map was apparently exhibited unacknowledged by the Mining Department, as was the norm.) Meyers is also believed to have illuminated at least one of the many addresses presented to the Duke of Edinburgh on his 1867 Victorian tour. Then M.E. Meyers suddenly fled Melbourne, his career shattered. In October 1869 he was charged with deserting his child at Melbourne (Julius Myers would then have been thirteen), the warrant for his arrest describing him as 'a Prussian, a portrait painter, aged 40 [the right age for E.J.D., given police approximation], 6 feet [182 cm] high, thin build, fair complexion, hair, moustache, and whiskers, the latter all round the face; generally wears dark coat, light tweed trousers and vest, and black bell-topper’. The Ballarat detective police arrested him on 9 November. Afterwards, he may have taken Julius to Singapore.

In April 1875 W. Moore lent the illumination Allegorical Misrach , catalogued asby 'W.E. Myers’, to the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition arranged by the NSW Agricultural Society at Sydney (cat. 161). M.E. Meyers in person was back at Sydney in 1876, advertising as a 'Calligrapher Illuminator & General Draftsman’ of 199 Castlereagh Street in that year’s Agricultural Society’s exhibition catalogue and offering evening classes to prepare candidates for employment as draughtsmen in the Surveyor-General’s Office. His signed illuminated address incorporating photographs of his clients, the employees of the Colonial Sugar Refinery at Pyrmont, was presented to Sir Edward Knox on his departure for England on 24 December 1877 (Mitchell Library). Ten years later, Meyers illuminated an address for Sydney Moss, choirmaster at the Sydney Synagogue, as a token of appreciation of the orchestral and choral service held in the Great Synagogue on 19 June to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee (1887, National Gallery of Australia). Signed 'M.E. Meyers, Calligrapher, Illuminator and Designer to H.R.H. the Duke of Edinbgh’, it includes a photograph of Queen Victoria among its elaborate pen, brush, coloured ink and gold leaf decorations. He also illuminated a testimonial to Charles Turner, a cricketer from Bathurst who scored 103 runs in a match against Surrey when the Australian Test team toured England in 1888 (Bathurst Historical Museum).

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011