sketcher, amateur photographer, etcher, lithographer, carver, architect and surveyor, was born on 13 February 1808 near Kennington Common, London, son of Robert Russell, a merchant and keen sketcher, and Margaret, née Leslie. Robert junior received his early architectural training in the office of the popular Edinburgh architect William Burn in 1823-28, then worked for a time with Abraham & Donthorne in London. In 1830-31 he was with the Ordnance Survey at Drogheda, Ireland, and through this experience became intrigued with surveying. His final architectural position in England (in 1832-33) was in the office of the most eminent architect of the Regency period, the ageing John Nash, then working on Buckingham Palace.
Russell migrated to Sydney in 1833, arriving on 24 September in the Sir John Rae Reid . He brought letters of introduction to Surveyor General T.L. Mitchell , among others, and by 20 October had been appointed to the Survey Department as acting assistant to the town surveyor of Sydney, Felton Matthew. However, his work was criticised for being slow and even inaccurate. Despite this, he became assistant town surveyor at the beginning of 1835 and from this position was appointed senior assistant surveyor to the new Port Phillip District settlement (Melbourne) on 10 September 1836. While in Sydney Russell became one of the first pupils of Conrad Martens and drew a series of views 'in the style of Martens’ – presumably those lithographed by J.G. Austin and published (with no acknowledgement to Russell) as Lithographic Drawings of Sydney and its Environs in 1836 . Original pencil sketches in one of Russell’s sketchbooks (DL) clearly identify him as the original artist for at least some of these.
After criticism of his work in Melbourne and the appointment of Robert Hoddle to take charge of the survey, Russell returned to Sydney. His difficulties continued there and he was dismissed on 7 June 1837. He managed to be re-employed by the government, however, and returned to Melbourne in March 1838 as clerk of works to the Port Phillip District. His return distressed the administrator, William Lonsdale, and Russell held the position only until 18 June 1839 when Governor Gipps directed from Sydney that he be removed from office; Lonsdale had accused him of neglecting his duties and of being insubordinate.
During his fifteen months as clerk of works, Russell was engaged on many small projects, supervising building and repair work. He sent copies of drawings for seven small buildings to the colonial architect in Sydney and must have been responsible for the design of some of them. These were a guard room, a store for government tools and the Clerk of Works’ Office (which he probably designed), all on the Government Block; the Mounted Police Barracks near Richmond (started before he arrived), a watch-house (most likely to his design) built on the Market Reserve, and a house for the superintendent of native police together with a wooden barracks for the Aboriginal troops at Narre Warren near Dandenong. Among the buildings whose repairs he supervised were the Military Barracks, the temporary hospital and prisoners’ barracks, and the Surveyor’s Office – all on the Government Block and built before Russell became clerk of works. He also supervised repairs to the police magistrate’s residence, known today as Lonsdale’s Cottage.
After his dismissal Russell remained at the Melbourne settlement and entered into private practice as an architect and surveyor. He married Mary Ann Collis, a daughter of James Smith, on 19 December 1939. His surveying took him far afield and included work at Port Albert and Wilson’s Promontory early in 1843 among many other commissions. His most substantial design as a private architect was St James’s Church of England near the corner of Collins and Williams Streets, now altered and relocated to King Street. Even this was marred by a dispute over his design for the spire, and he was replaced in 1841 by the accomplished architect Charles Laing. He also designed the first Bank of Australasia in Melbourne (1840-41), a two-storey stone building that stood on the north side of Collins Street just west of the Queen Street intersection.
In June 1856 Russell and his family went to England for four years. There he acted as a guide to art exhibitions for visiting colonial friends, but no drawings are known from these years. In February 1860 the family returned to Melbourne aboard the Norfolk .
Russell was noted for his drawing skills. He remained in regular contact with Martens, who as late as 1867 was helping him sell his drawings. He made numerous sketches of the Melbourne settlement and, whatever judgement might be passed on his poor performance as surveyor and clerk of works, left later generations the clearest indication of what early Melbourne looked like. Surviving works suggest his working method. He first sketched the scene in pencil and ink, noting colours and materials. Then he prepared a watercolour (perhaps more than one) based on the sketch, refining the subject matter of the view. Each sketch and watercolour was usually dated, although some of the sketches can be attributed to Russell only on the basis of a developed watercolour.
In the later 1880s he reworked some of his earlier sketches and care must be taken in distinguishing these from the early drawings. Later versions, such as his watercolour View from Batman’s Hill February 8, 1844, Looking North-West (22 November 1884, LT), were doubtless stimulated by the pioneering nostalgia associated with the 1888 centenary of white settlement in Australia and the fiftieth anniversary of the Melbourne settlement on the Yarra. His artistic endeavours encompassed poetry and a novel, The Heart , an unpublished romance annotated as having been written in May 1849 (NLA).
About ninety drawings by Russell are now in the Dixson Library while the National Library owns about sixty. The La Trobe Library also has a large collection of his work, including versions of Melbourne from the Falls dating from 30 June 1837 to 1893 and late watercolours after sketches by Phillip Parker King (done in 1886) and Charles Joseph La Trobe , together with a few oddities such as 'Birds painted on marble’ and a cameo carved on stone from Dight’s Falls (1890). Preston notes that he was a pioneer etcher and lithographer in Victoria and he was certainly interested in printmaking and experimenting with photography and glass-prints; others, however, may have undertaken the technical side of this work. Russell was introduced to photography by the geologist and explorer Paul Strzelecki about June 1840. He wrote in retrospect that Strzelecki 'first brought information of the discovery of photographic impressions and told me all that was then known of the methods as practised by Daguerr? [sic] on silvered plates of copper’. He is then said to have experimented with daguerreotypes and later with heliogravure and in 1872 was awarded a bronze medal at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition for 'excellence in etchings on glass, printed by means of light’, the photolithographer in this case being Troedel . Reproductive etchings after Rembrandt survive in family possession. Etchings on paper after Russell’s early sketches of Melbourne were executed by Eliezer Montefiore .
Russell died on 10 April 1900, aged ninety-two, perhaps in financial difficulties as he was granted a small government pension several months before his death. In his early years at Port Phillip he had been one of the founding members of the Melbourne Club and the Melbourne Cricket Club. His portrait by Alice Panton , a daughter of Joseph Anderson Panton , is in the National Gallery of Victoria.
- Writers:
- Tibbits, George
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
