Design and Art Australia Online

painter and wood-engraver, was born in Brixton, London, on 21 November 1828, the third son and fourth child of the renowned engraver Edward Calvert, and Mary née Bennell. Brought up in a family circle dedicated to art, Samuel was taught painting, designing, etching and engraving by his father. His older brothers John and William migrated to South Australia in 1843 and, influenced by them, Samuel left his job as clerk in a London East India Company house and sailed for Adelaide aboard the Symmetry , arriving on 9 November 1848. He secured employment at George Dehane’s printery in King William Street and by February 1850 was providing illustrations for the short-lived Monthly Almanac and Illustrated Commentator , of which he was co-proprietor. By July 1850 Calvert had set up an Artists’ Repository in King William Street. In 1851 he was in partnership with the printer Alfred Waddy (who remained a printer and publisher in Adelaide long after Calvert moved to Melbourne). As well as illustrative work for the Almanac , Calvert produced wood engravings for billheads and advertisements, and lithographed views such as The Old Spot, Gawler Town and Railway Hotel Port Adelaide . The original watercolour for his lithograph City of Adelaide S.A. Looking South East , issued as a free supplement in the April issue of the Almanac , is in the Art Gallery of South Australia, which also holds his wash drawing, Port Adelaide Regatta and the North Arm … December 24th, 1850 .

On 24 January 1852 Calvert left for Melbourne in the Asia . There he again worked as a wood-engraver, providing illustrations for books and advertisements and for the illustrated monthly magazine The Armchair (1853-54). His first recorded work in Melbourne is a frontispiece, Diggers , and a map, Routes to the Victoria Diggings , for James Bonwick’s Notes of a Gold Digger and Gold Diggers’ Guide (Melbourne 1852). In March 1853 the Argus reported that he had published an engraving of the horse Ballaarat, winner of the Melbourne Town Plate for 1853. In 1854 he was in partnership with his older brother, William. As engravers, lithographers and draughtsmen, they produced the short-lived illustrated periodicals Victoria Illustrated (a broadsheet) and Australian Home Companion and Illustrated Weekly Magazine . The firm also printed the illustrated periodicals Australian Builder and Weekly Remembrancer and local almanacs, until 1857 when the partnership seems to have been dissolved.

In 1854, 1856 and 1857 Calvert had successfully tendered for the engraving and printing of Victorian postage stamps, but difficulties in securing progress payments from the government resulted in financial difficulties. Having pawned stamps to raise money to assist in the development of a stamp-perforating machine, he was convicted of fraud on the Post Office and sentenced to three months’ gaol, but successfully appealed on a legal point. He declared himself bankrupt in May 1858 and was discharged in July 1859. In the interim he seems to have been lessee of the Fitzroy Hotel.

For some years Calvert continued as a wood-engraver, working either from home or as an employee of a printing firm, possibly his brother’s. In 1865 he had a two-storey studio building constructed at the rear of his home, 41 George Street, Fitzroy, notable for the generous provision of south lighting on the upper floor (in 1873 it became the studio of the painter Louis Buvelot ). In 1867 he again set up commercially as a wood-engraver, at 87 Little Collins Street East, close to William’s printery in the same street. He remained there until 1886, then moved to 85 (192) Little Collins Street East with his son, William Samuel Calvert , who carried on the business as an engraver while Samuel listed himself as an artist.

Samuel Calvert seems to have retired to England in 1888 where he wrote A Memoir of Edward Calvert, Artist, by his Third Son (published London 1893 in an edition of 250 copies). Returning to Melbourne shortly afterwards, he opened the Burlington Gallery at 90-92 Collins Street in November 1894. It was destroyed by fire the following May but rapidly rebuilt. He remained at this address as a working artist until 1898 then moved to Bank Place. In 1904 or ’05 he again returned to England, where he remained until his death.

Calvert took every opportunity to exhibit examples of his engraved work: with the Victorian Fine Arts’ Society in August 1853, at the Melbourne Exhibition in 1854 and the Victorian Exhibition of Art in December 1856; with the Victorian Industrial Society in February 1858 (certificate of merit); at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial (silver medal), the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition, the 1872 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition (silver medal), the 1873 London International, the 1874 Sydney Metropolitan Intercolonial (highly commended), the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial (medal), the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial, the second National, Agricultural and Industrial Association Exhibition at Brisbane in 1877, the 1879 Sydney International, the 1880 Melbourne International, the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition and the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition.

As well as engravings, including a portrait of Sir John Manners-Sutton and a view of a Fancy Dress Ball, Calvert showed an oil painting titled Aboriginals Camping near the Murray, South Australia (NLA?) at the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition (it was also shown at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition). The Black Ranges , an oil painting depicting the Pyrenees from the Grampians, was shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1875, while a watercolour, Musidora (with a quote from Thomson’s Seasons ), was included in the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition that same year. The latter reappeared at the 1879 Sydney International along with his other original paintings, I am Ready and Light in Shadow , eight theatrical designs for a burlesque of Alfred the Great (written by Marcus Clarke) and a proof impression of an engraving after a picture by Buvelot. His wood engraving of I am Ready was shown at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition along with reproductive engravings after Buvelot, Carse and others.

Calvert was a prolific worker and engraved illustrations for nearly all the Melbourne illustrated papers and periodicals from 1855 to the 1880s as well as for publications in other colonies. Examples can be found in Melbourne Punch , the Illustrated Journal of Australasia , Illustrated Newsletter of Australasia , Illustrated Melbourne Post , Australasian Sketcher , Illustrated Australian News and Illustrated New Zealand Herald . Clifford Craig has identified numerous Calvert prints in the Tasmanian illustrated press dating from the 1860s. Of course not all were from his own designs and many would have been executed by his employees. Reproductive engravings after sketches by Chevalier , von Gué rard , Albert C. Cooke and others, as well as from photographs, are common. He engraved Edward Bateman 's Australian flora initial headings, tailpieces and titles for Melbourne Public Library catalogues from 1861. (A scrapbook in SLV includes a complete set of proofs for the catalogues, unusually printed in colour, while a partial set of the woodblocks is held, uncatalogued, in the SLV with 10 more finished examples in the NGV, discovered by Anne Neale).

Some prints were undoubtedly Calvert’s own in both design and execution. He was elected to membership of the Victorian Academy of Arts on 1 November 1871 and to its council on 11 April 1872, serving until 1887 and continuing his membership until the Victorian Artists’ Society was formed. He exhibited watercolours and oil paintings — mostly bush scenes — at the Academy’s exhibitions of 1875, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1882 and 1883. He died at Crowthorne, Berkshire, England, on 1 January 1913, survived by his son, William Samuel of Melbourne, and his two daughters, Miss E.F. Calvert and Mrs F.J. Epsom of London. His wife Emma né e Lake predeceased him.

Writers:

Darragh, Thomas A.

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011