Design and Art Australia Online

painter, professional photographer, printmaker and assayer, was born in Italy, son of the painter Joseph Severn and his wife Elizabeth, née Montgomerie, and brother of Joseph, Arthur, Mary and Walter Severn, all of whom were professional English painters whose work was shown in Australia, although there is no evidence that any of Henry’s family ever joined him in the colonies. His father had accompanied the dying poet John Keats to Rome in 1820 and subsequently served as British consul there for twenty years. A mineral assayer, Henry arrived in Sydney on 14 March 1854 aboard the Maid of Judah (1st Cabin class), having been appointed a clerk at the Sydney Mint. He married Frances Allan at Holy Trinity Church of England (The Garrison Church at The Rocks) on 26 September 1855. They lived at Neutral Bay, where Jevons photographed him. The Severns had 6 children, all born in Australia.

Severn helped decorate the North Shore School of Arts to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Wales in 1863: the Sydney Morning Herald of 12 June noted that he painted the transparencies while the other decorations were by Mr Bell (probably the architect Edward Bell ). In 1866 his 'Picture in Anastatic Printing’ and some stereoscopic and microscopic photographs he had taken were shown at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. He received an honourable mention for the photographs. The critic of the Australian Monthly Magazine , writing under the pseudonym 'Sol’, thought them 'very well taken on the whole’, regretting only that some appeared to have suffered the effects of dust-storms and hot winds.

Severn was also represented in the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, showing stereoscopic views (for sale at a shilling each) and two photographs of the Longford Viaduct. At the huge Melbourne Public Library Exhibition of 1869, he exhibited five anastatic prints. He and John Curtayne also lent sketches by various members of the Severn family to this exhibition, including two pen-and-ink sketches of a deer by Walter (the subject of many of Walter’s paintings shown at various London exhibitions between 1853 and 1889) and three or four pencil and watercolour portraits by Mary Severn. Her watercolour titled Two Girls , lent by Curtayne, is possibly that now called Two Children in an album of watercolours in the Mitchell Library.

Early in the 1870s Henry Severn went to New Zealand to work as a mineral assayer (1872-75). There he painted a panoramic view of the Thames goldfields. Afterwards he returned to Sydney; in 1877 he gave a series of public lectures 'on scientific subjects’ at the Guild Hall in Castlereagh Street. He later returned to England.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989