sketcher, amateur photographer, teacher and clergyman, is listed in Conrad Martens 's account book for July 1847 as having paid £7 for drawing lessons. In October Rev. Charles Kemp purchased a view of Sydney from Martens for 3 guineas and in December a view of Darling Point Road for 5 guineas. Like many Anglican clergymen, Kemp ran a boys’ school to supplement his stipend. A.B. Spark’s stepson Henry Radford was a senior boarder with him from September 1851 and for six months in 1852 Spark’s eldest son, Alick, also attended the school. Rev. Charles Kemp was experimenting with photography before 1858, by which time he had invented 'a very good apparatus for taking stereoscopic pictures’ reported a visiting English professional photographer, Frank Haes . Haes thought this 'the only novel contrivance invented in the colony worth recording’.
In 1862 Edmund Thomas 's drawing class at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts was examined by F.C. Terry and 'Mr Kemp’. This may, however, have been Charles Kemp (1813-64), a local journalist, businessman and Anglican layman who also commissioned work from Martens.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
