Design and Art Australia Online

Eliza Younghusband (c.1840-?), album compiler and probable creator of at least some of the art works in her album, was the second daughter of William Younghusband (1814-1863), a wealthy South Australian merchant, pastoralist, and politician, and Louisa Cecillia Thomas. Although no birth records exist for Eliza, given the marriage date of her parents on 1 September 1836 at Howrah Church in Bengal, India, the approximate timeframe of her album, (1856-65), and her marriage to Henry Frederick Shipster in North Adelaide in September 1864, it is likely that she was born in the late 1830s or early 1840s either in India or England. Her father, William, emigrated to South Australia in 1842 aboard the Fortfeild, and sent for his family two years later; Louisa and the children, (who, one can only assume, included Eliza and her two sisters), sailed from Liverpool aboard the Bleng, arriving in Adelaide in September 1844.

An undated photograph of the Younghusband estate in North Adelaide, (ill. Ilbury, 8), suggests the attained prosperity of the family during the mid-nineteenth century resulting from the growth of William’s substantial mercantile endeavours and pastoral holdings. The family’s financial success is further attested to in a letter from William on 22 January 1846, regarding the arrival of two “China boys” sent from his Singapore agents, in which he states, “we are in consequence better off for servants than most people here” (Richards, 184).

It was thus within a privileged middle-class environment that Eliza Younghusband assembled her album, her only known artistic output to date. A gift from her mother in October 1856 and compiled in the years leading up to her marriage, Eliza’s album (1856-65), housed at the National Library, belongs to the genre of the sentiment album, a variation on the commonplace book, which became popular in England and Germany towards the end of the eighteenth century. Colonial sentiment albums from the 1850s and 1860s display a particularly rich example of mid-nineteenth-century visual culture characterised by a sophisticated aesthetic vocabulary that merges art, science, and media. Containing a combination of drawings, watercolours, engravings, chromolithographic scraps, keepsakes, and botanical specimens, typically from multiple contributors, these albums embody two-dimensional crafted collections meant for exchange and display among family and friends.

Featuring a black lacquered-board cover decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay, the opulent exterior of the Eliza Younghusband album not only suggests the elevated status of its owner-creator but also functions as an elaborate frame for the interior pictorial programme. Typical of the genre, the programme consists of a number of pencil sketches of picturesque landscapes and scenes from Shakespeare as well as several botanical compositions, including a number of delicately rendered watercolours of floral bouquets that allude to the strong amateur tradition of flower painting in colonial Australia.

Notably, Eliza’s album also features a number of maritime images that potentially relate to her father’s involvement in the shipping industry. William pioneered riverboat trade along the Murray River in partnership with Francis Cadell (1822-1879), conducting one of the first successful steam voyages up the Murray on the Lady Augusta in 1853. An account of the launch of the Eureka, the cargo boat built to accompany the Lady Augusta, by the journalist James Allen, Jr., describes the event on 23 August 1853, in which Eliza played a ritual role:

“The ceremony of christening was performed by Miss Eliza Younghusband, who wore a wreath of pretty native flowers in her hair, and who altogether presented a most interesting appearance” (Reilly).

While there is no direct reference to the launch in Eliza’s album, as the event predates the earliest entry by three years, the album does contain a watercolour drawing of the yacht Volante (p.30), and a pencil drawing of the wreck of the Tortoise off Ascension Island (p.26), both unattributed, yet most likely created around 1860 by members of Eliza’s social circle. Moreover, the album also includes a pencil drawing by B. Douglas of the steamboat Corio crossing the sandbar at the mouth of the River Murray, Goolwa (p.15). An inscription on the back of the drawing regarding the crossing states,

... Having on board Miss Younghusband, and Miss Young who were the first English ladies who ever crossed that long dreaded obstruction[?] to Australia’s inland river. In Mr. B. Douglas’s kindest regards to Miss Younghusband, Port Adelaide 31st July 1857

The inclusion of such images suggests the inherent sociality of Eliza’s album, which features a number of compositions by different contributors, including a pencil drawing of shells by her husband Henry Shipster, (c.1865), two botanical watercolours by C. Hill, (1857), and a corroboree scene by the artist William Wyatt (1838-1872). Wyatt is also potentially responsible for the inscription accompanying another image featuring a cut-out of an open book that reads across its blank spread,

Australian Flora- being a complete series of all the flowers and plants known throughout the Australian Province! Respectfully dedicated to the best dancer in the place, W.W. (p.34).

Another admirer of Eliza, William Oswald Hodgkinson (1835-1900), a literary editor with The Age who joined the Burke and Wills expedition at Swan Hill in 1860, contributed a flowery poem as well as two watercolours. Both dated 1861, the images depict an armed conflict between the expedition members and a group of Aborigines at the Bulloo River (p.46), and the desolate camp at Koorliatto Creek (p.42). Hodgkinson left Adelaide shortly after to join John McKinlay’s South Australian Burke Relief Expedition. The album also contains a lithograph by Ludwig Becker (1808?-1861) related to the expedition, although it is uncertain how Younghusband acquired the print.

While such images attest to Eliza’s involvement in the burgeoning social scene of Adelaide in the 1850s and 60s, the presence of a number of mixed media compositions also suggests her strong interest in the appropriation of contemporary visual culture. In particular, her album contains a collection of chromolithographic cut-outs that reflect the popularity of coloured, printed “scraps” which were widely collected and displayed throughout the second half of the nineteenth century in scrapbooks and albums, as well as within the domestic interior on screens, doors, and furniture.

In addition, her album features two unattributed images that incorporate the technique of collage, the first of which is a page displaying a bouquet of multi-coloured seaweed intricately arranged within a decorative cut-out green and yellow paper basket (p.29). Inscribed as “ocean’s gay flowers,” this marine collage is representative of the nineteenth-century pastime of collecting and arranging seaweed specimens into fanciful compositions, a popular decorative movement that was linked to scientific advances in the field of botany as well as to the aesthetics of Romanticism and the Gothic Revival.

In another example of collage work, a series of watercolour cut-outs of flowers and a butterfly have been affixed to the surface of a pressed leaf, the effect of which is an integrated composition that combines painting with native foliage (p.35). This combination also figures in an image of a verdant lake scene painted in oils on a gum leaf, in which the leaf functions as both canvas and frame (p.11). Such works subscribe to the colonial botanical dialogue in which the collection and domestification of natural specimens mirrored the processes of colonisation and civilisation.

Little is known about Eliza Youghusband’s life after 1865.

Writers:

Duggins, Molly Note:

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed