Design and Art Australia Online

silhouette artist and pastoralist, was born on the Isle of Arran, Scotland, son of Robert Macredie, a sailor, and Elizabeth, née Cunningham. His interest in Australia may have been enhanced by seeing D.T. Kilburn 's daguerreotype portraits of Victorian Aborigines brought to Scotland by his cousin Robert Cunningham, a Port Phillip squatter, for publication as illustrations in William Westgarth’s Australia Felix (Edinburgh 1848). The illustrator is not named but it is possible that Andrew copied these for publication. Andrew Macredie came to Victoria in 1848, ten years after his elder brother Robert, who held various runs in the Wimmera. In 1855 he joined Robert in partnership at Banyenong West, on the left bank of the Avon River, where he remained until 1859. Parts of the run were held in their joint names until 1864, although Robert had died in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1859.

While at Banyenong, Andrew Macredie put together two volumes of silhouettes of friends and neighbours (La Trobe Library), naming each person and often accompanying the silhouette with a quotation. Seventy-seven people are depicted (quite often more than once) in sixty-nine plates. At first glance these appear to be straightforward representations of local pastoralists and their wives, but on closer examination it appears that Andrew Macredie was mildly satirising his fellow landowners. For example, in showing two gentlemen in a discussion he writes: 'They did talk of Discounts and of Cash Accounts’, and of another pastoralist, 'His application was for 1 million acres. Lord of all he surveyed—and His psalm was “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want”. But he got a dry country and had to make his own water’. The wit is sharp and dry and the subjects are closely observed.

The silhouettes, precise and skilful, cut from black paper, often have watercolour additions and white, gold or body-colour highlights. The frontispiece to each collection is quite curious. The first is titled He Presents his Book of Beauty to Ye Queen Year of [1854-55] and shows a figure (who may be the author) on bended knee presenting a book to a female nude. Behind and around the figures swim tiny representations of angels, cupids, goblins and devils, while another woman on a rearing horse attempts to thrust a lance into the man’s heart. In the second volume, titled with the Harlequinade catchcry of Here We Are Again , satyrs, goblins, jesters and other Bosch-like figures tumble out of the sky on to a cuckold and several bare-bottomed women, while two pairs of scissors snap at their heels. It is doubtful that Macredie’s subjects—the Campbells, the Kinnears, the Hamiltons, the Donalds and other Scottish Presbyterian neighbours—were shown the finished productions.

Writers:

Bruce, Candice

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011