Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, lithographer, newspaper proprietor and stationer, was born in London on 10 March 1816, seventh of the eleven children of Thomas Browne and Jane, née Rutherford. Educated at Christ’s Hospital school between 1824 and 1833, Browne emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land, probably in 1835 with his brother James, and settled in Launceston. There he apparently managed Henry Dowling’s printing and stationery business. With Dowling as a witness, Thomas married Sarah Spicer in St John’s Church, Launceston, on 10 March 1835; they had fourteen children. In 1844, after the birth of their third child, Eleanor, the family moved to Hobart Town. Thomas opened his own printing and stationery business at 34 Liverpool Street in July.

Thomas Browne is thought to have been the first resident professional photographer in Hobart. He opened a daguerreotype studio in his shop in 1846. With a move to new premises in Macquarie Street by 1848, he operated his photographic studio until 1853. He is only known to have produced portraits, which, he stated in 1852, could be taken 'in any but rainy weather … The early hours of the day are generally most favourable’. He offered 'Daguerreotype Miniatures for Lockets or Brooches’ as well as standard cased portraits.

A surviving daguerreotype of 10-ten year-old Charles Boyes (a son of G.T.W.B. Boyes ), taken on 24 December 1849, is at Narryna, the Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum in Hobart. That of George Hull, father of the diarist Hugh Munro Hull , taken in 1850, is reproduced in Hugh Munro Hull’s Reminiscences . Late in life George Hull annotated this verso: 'The first or nearly the first Daguerotype [sic] or photo taken in Hobart Town by Mr. Brown (late of the Corporation) and before beards were in fashion’. Predating both, however, was a daguerreotype of three Tasmanian Aborigines (unlocated). This was coveted by G.A. Robinson , who wrote to John Skinner Prout on 16 March 1848: 'I should much like Mr Brown’s dgt. group of Walter, Mary Ann & David Brune’. Robinson doubtless acquired it, for Plomley points out that a daguerreotype of three Tasmanians was included in the collection of ethnographica sold by Robinson’s widow to Bernard Davis in 1866 for £30.

Browne simultaneously worked as a lithographer, printing 'plans of estates, circulars, bill heads, maps &c’. He published a Pictorial Alphabet in 1845, and known single lithographs include a tinted High School, Hobart Town (1848), after William Duke . T. Browne’s Hat Almanack for 1849 was issued late in 1848. Early in 1846 he was proprietor of the Spectator newspaper for a few months. Appointed city surveyor and director of Waterworks in January 1854 at a salary of £450 per annum, Browne remained in this position until a few months before his death on 23 December 1870. He was buried in St David’s Cemetery, Hobart Town, beside the two infant daughters who had long predeceased him.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011