travelling photographer, was working at Melbourne in the 1850s. He exhibited 'Daguerreotyped Views of various parts of Melbourne … A Daguerreotype View of Hawthorne … Two Landscapes of Toorak House [and] Four Daguerreotype Views of St Kilda, Exhibition Building’ at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, as well as a portrait of the town clerk by P.M. Batchelder . Possibly he then worked for a short time in Sydney before coming to Armidale in 1859. On 22 January he announced in the Armidale Express that he was 'on his way up the bush’ but was 'prepared to take likenesses, &c. from Ten till dusk’ on paper, leather, iron, glass or silver plates at Sydney prices, 'so long as sufficient encouragement offers’, having set up his studio next door to Mrs Molloy’s Wellington Inn. 'Who knows what a Day may bring forth?’, he gloomily prognosticated, 'or the inestimable value that any one of the chances of life may suddenly confer on a Photographic Portrait, and the remorse that may follow its neglect’.
Despite the warning, McClelland’s services were not long required in Armidale. He moved on to Tenterfield, Warwick, then Drayton early in 1859 and may have continued on to Ipswich and Brisbane. If so, he could not have remained long at the last two places; he was forwarding display photographs from Sydney to Brisbane in June. These were put on show, evidently for sale, at Thomas S. Warry’s Queen Street pharmacy and dental surgery. The Brisbane Courier thought the view of Drayton 'most pleasing, on account of the half-cleared land, and the distant bush brought out so well, contrasting with the village looking houses and primitive style of inns’. In July he sent up a 'splendid photograph of St Mark’s, Darlinghurst [Darling Point], Sydney’.
McClelland appeared in person in September, but warned that he was there 'for but a limited stay’. Having opened his Brisbane Photographic Studio in Queen Street, he immediately advertised 'eight separate Stereoscopes of Sydney supplied at 24s. per dozen or 2s.6d. each’. More significantly, he had just completed 'a set of views of Brisbane, mounted on cloth, three feet [92 cm] long at 40s. each’ which provided a 'complete panorama of the City of Brisbane’. He also advertised paper prints of specific Brisbane residences, buildings and streetscapes; the two known views of Queen Street taken in 1859 and 1860 (later copies Royal Historical Society of Queensland; Queensland Art Gallery) are most likely his. He boasted that he could supply views 'by any process now in the Colonies’ and was producing 'talbotypes’ (ambrotypes) in 1859 of full-plate, 10 × 12 inch, (25 × 30 cm) size.
Early in 1860 McClelland moved to Ipswich en route to Sydney. Some of his views were probably sent on to the 1862 London International Exhibition after being shown the previous year at the Queensland preliminary exhibition. In 1864 Robert McClelland, 'artist’, was listed in Sands Sydney Directory as living at Egan Street, Newtown. In 1869 he visited Bowen, Maryborough and Townsville, North Queensland.
- Writers:
- Fisher, Rod
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
