professional photographer, produced an undated carte-de-visite from Campbelltown outside Sydney, undoubtedly as a travelling rather than resident photographer. Baxter appears to have had stayed nowhere very long during a photographic career that extended from at least 1866 to the end of the century. He was at Tumut in southern NSW in 1866, in partnership with Alexander McDonald . By the middle of the year their portable studio was at the rear of a cottage next to Levy’s store in Monaro Street, Queanbeyan, where they were advertising their willingness to take portraits, landscapes, residences, tombstones, interiors, etc. Characteristically, most of their work was portraiture, although only a view of the simple Gothic Revival Methodist Church in Rutledge Street is known to have survived from these travels (1868, Queanbeyan & District Historical Society). It is the earliest known photograph of the town.
Baxter and McDonald left Queanbeyan and their 'magnificent glass gallery’ on 1 August 1868, bound for Araluen, Boorowa and Yass. They returned in May 1869 and worked for a short time from a cottage in Morrisset Street. Cartes-de-visite produced on this visit include that of an unidentified child (reproduced in Lea-Scarlett and Robinson), which is distinguished from the earlier photographs by the printed mount identifying their headquarters: 'Baxter & McDonald, Artist Photographers, Cooma, Manaro [sic]’.
In December 1870 Robert Baxter announced his first solo visit to Queanbeyan. He continued to be a regular visitor there from his southern headquarters at Cooma (1870 71), Yass (1872) then Young (1874 77, 1880). A portrait of the infant John James Smallhorn taken at Queanbeyan on 19 June 1877, when the sitter was 16 months old, is stamped on the back from Baxter’s Young studio. He was at Merimbula in 1879. Baxter apparently continued to work around the NSW south coast for years; a photograph from Wollongong by 'R. Baxter’ is dated 1900.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
