painter, etcher, designer and inventor, was born on 26 December 1873 in St Kilda, Melbourne. Her parents, both aged 31 at the time of her birth and both from County Galway, Ireland, had married in Melbourne in 1871. Her mother, Emily Florence Kate O’Shaughnessy , was a partner in the leading Melbourne photographic firm of Johnstone & O’Shannessy (sic), where her father, George Henry Massey Hasler , was manager. Both retired from photography before Muriel was born. She spent her childhood in and around St Kilda where the family lived in comfortable circumstances. She and her younger sister, Letitia, were probably instructed in art, at least from their parents and tutor; it is also possible that Muriel learnt etching from John Mather . She played the cello, Letitia played the harp and both played the piano.
Muriel Hasler was living with her family in Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1898 when she married 29 year-old Edward Harold Binney, a medical practitioner of Brighton. They had two sons. By 1907 the family was living at St Clair in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, and Edward had a private medical practice in Macquarie Street. Although Muriel practised art as a genteel activity from youth – a small oil painting of the Hasler family home in Melbourne dated 1894 is extant (family collection) – the frieze, copperplate etchings and craft works she showed in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition were her first recorded public exhibits.
In Sydney she may have had drawing lessons from Dattilo Rubbo ; her charcoal sketch of him also remains in the family. She made Christmas and greeting cards, drew cartoons and sketches for her children and may have designed theatrical costumes (a family collection of unsigned ink drawings of these is probably her work). Her papers, letters and drawings reveal a strong, confident, creative woman with an independent, inquiring spirit.
From 1912 the family spent some time in England while the boys were at school. Back at Sydney, they lived at Vaucluse. Edward, a specialist in children’s diseases, died on 19 November 1927 of longstanding multiple sclerosis. Then, her granddaughter’s recollect, Muriel frequently travelled overseas, presumably in connection with her inventions. Edward reportedly had disapproved of his wife’s passion for inventing things, which did not find full expression until 1929 when she presented her inventions to the British Society of Inventors and showed some at the International Exhibition of Inventions. Her leg prosthesis was awarded a silver medal. Other exhibits were a portable shoe-stand and travelling case, awarded a certificate of merit, and a cigarette smoker’s combined case and stand. She showed the shoe-stand and medical appliance again the following year and it was reported in Sydney that both were about to be put into commercial production in England.
Muriel Binney lived at Watsons Bay in the 1930s but continued to travel while her sons looked after her affairs. In 1934 she went to Russia. She became more eccentric in the 1940s, decking herself in bizarre outfits bought in Paris many years earlier and apparently developing a drinking problem. Committed to the Parramatta Mental Asylum, she died there of heart disease and chronic bronchitis on 11 May 1949, aged 74. Her body was cremated at Rookwood Crematorium.
Sydney Harbour Foreshores at Sunset August 1907 (detail), watercolour on paper with cotton border in four sections 45 × 1939 cm overall. Australian National Maritime Museum. This 360 degree panorama, nearly 20 metres long, was intended as an architectural frieze for Mrs Binney’s Elizabeth Bay home. Viewed from a position in the middle of Sydney Harbour, the four (linked) sections depict: Woolloomooloo Bay, Farm Cove, North Sydney, Neutral Bay and Fort Denison (427 cm); Mosman Bay, Athol Bight, Taylor Bay, Clifton Gardens, Obelisk Bay and Middle Head (544 cm); Manly, North and South Heads and Watsons Bay (427 cm); Vaucluse Bay, Rose Bay, Double Bay, Rushcutters Bay, Garden Island and Potts Point (541 cm). While the buildings on the horizon are depicted in blocky outline, the boats, foreshores and navigational markers are quite clearly shown, including HMS Powerful , the flagship of the Australia Station, in Farm Cove. Capturing the stillness of the city diffused with the gentle yellow light of dusk, with vessels silhouetted against the setting sun and the boats on the southern side of the Harbour highlighted, an almost melancholy mood is established.
At the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition this ambitious panorama was entered with 23 other designs in the Fine Art Category class 30a, 'Best original design for a frieze’, for a prize of a guinea. As was the case with half the work in the exhibition, it was not for sale. Being married to a doctor, Mrs Binney was quite wealthy and did not need to sell her work. However, evidently aware of the potential of her frieze for reproduction as a wallpaper she applied for and was granted copyright on it in September 1907, shortly after the Sydney preliminary Women’s Work exhibition opened.
Binney showed a diverse collection of work at the Melbourne exhibition along with the frieze: copper-plate etchings, an 'ingenious invention’ (probably the child’s cot and playground later shown in London) for which she won a second prize, a poster design 'for Biscuits’, and a painted fire-screen, silk opera bag, silk d’oyleys and chair upholstery, plus 'Ormolu occasional chair upholstery, in watercolours on white silk’. Her frieze was not awarded a prize, the first prize going to Edith Alsop and the second to Ethel Crooke. It was one of the strongest sections, as the Sydney Morning Herald of 24 October 1907 noted.
Binney’s frieze was nevertheless chosen to be sent on to London for display in the NSW Court of the Australian Pavilion at the Franco-British Exhibition, held at Shepherd’s Bush from 14 May to 31 October 1908. The Australian Agent-General in London had requested some examples from the Women’s Work exhibition and Binney’s contemporary panorama of Sydney Harbour fitted in perfectly with the aims of the London show: to encourage trade, commerce, tourism and immigration to New South Wales. Mrs Binney’s frieze and her child’s cot and playground invention, along with a set of six carved dining-room chairs made of Australian timbers and leather by Suzanne Gether and her Sydney pupils, were shown at London in the category 'Decoration and Furnishing’. The three women’s exhibits were placed in the New South Wales Court amid massive arches of wools and cereals, mounds of coal, photographs of the state’s commercial, industrial and social life and models and replica cabins of liners on the Australian route. According to the exhibition commissioners, 'the fine hand-painted frieze of Sydney Harbour by Mrs. Binney, which stretched half way round the Annex’ was a factor 'in impressing upon the public the artistic side of Sydney’. Mrs Binney was awarded a silver medal for it; she received another for her cot and playground.
Some time after Binney had patented her frieze it was cut into six pieces, possibly for installation in the Franco-British Exhibition. Afterwards it remained with the family, although descendants have no memory of ever seeing it on the walls of any family home. It has now been restored to its original four sections and displayed in the Australian National Maritime Museum. It was included in the Museum of Sydney exhibition Sydney by Ferry in 2002.
- Writers:
- Fletcher, Daina
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 1992
