professional photographer, worked in Melbourne from 1865. He was advertising portrait and landscape photographs from his residence in Madeline Street, Carlton in 1866-67, and he showed portfolios of photographic views of Victoria at the 1865 Dublin International and the 1867 Paris Universal exhibitions. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Cornell and his then partner Henry Glenny were awarded an Honourable Mention for their photographic views of Victoria (including some done on commission for the Kyneton Shire Council). One of them, Granite Boulders at the Black Hills, near Kyneton taken by Cornell, was the source of an 1867 oil painting (National Gallery of Australia) of the same title by Henry Gritten . A wood engraving after the same photograph appeared in the Australian News for Home Readers on 2 May 1868.
By 1872 Cornell was at Beechworth, Victoria, from which address he showed photographs at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition, which were sent on to the 1873 London International Exhibition. In 1873 he was working from both Beechworth and Bairnsdale and travelling around the colony. He finally settled in Sale, Gippsland. His photograph of the Aboriginal Mission Station at Ramahyuck, Lake Wellington (south-eastern Victoria) was exhibited in the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition from Foster Street, Sale, where he remained in business until 1891. Thirty-six photographs of Gippsland scenery were shown as a group in the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.
Photographs by Cornell are in the La Trobe Library (State Library of Victoria), while carte-de-visite portraits by Cornell & Glenny are in the Kyneton and Sale local history museums.
F. Cornell exhibited in the Victoria Court at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition: Class 12 – Photographic Proofs and Apparatus, cat. no.304 – Photographs.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
