mural painter and French teacher, was the companion and wife of the painter Abram Louis Buvelot . She met Buvelot when she was an assistant teacher at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and accompanied him to Victoria in 1864, being entered as his daughter on the passenger list. Buvelot set up as a portrait photographer at 92 Bourke Street East, one of Melbourne’s roughest areas where the clients, according to Louis, 'were coarse and rude, with one or two exceptions’. As he also recollected, 'Julie stayed downstairs to deal with the sitters. I did the photographing.’ His photographic portrait of Julie taken at this time (1865) survives.
After moving to a more salubrious part of Melbourne Julie gave French lessons while Louis was establishing himself as a painter. She acted as a lifelong interpreter for Louis, who never learnt to speak English. From the evidence of a pencil sketch by Thomas Clark , Madame Buvelot Painting, Monsieur Pfund Reading (c.1872, Bendigo AG), she also painted. The drawing shows her standing on the chimneypiece in a drawing room executing an ambititous landscape mural in situ .
In 1873 the Buvelots moved to a house previously occupied by Samuel Clayton in George Street, Fitzroy, which had an unusually well-lit studio. They named it 'Ma Retraite’. Julie continued to live there after Louis’s death in 1888, until her own death in 1902.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
