Design and Art Australia Online

painter, photographic colourist and art teacher, was a Welshman who came to New South Wales in 1866 for health reasons, he said, after a successful London practice as a miniaturist. In Sydney he opened a studio at 7 Bligh Street, where he offered miniatures in the manner with which he claimed to have enjoyed such success in London: painting in oils over photographs and giving them a high 'enamel’ finish. Examples were shown at Brush & MacDonnell’s jewellery shop in George Street in September 1866 together with a life-size portrait of Governor Sir John Young ('a duplicate of that which has been sent to the Melbourne Exhibition’). His locket-sized enamelled miniatures of the French Empress Eugenie and members of the British royal family were reported to be 'exquisite’. Admitting that photography originally had been feared as threatening portraiture ('and it certainly did for a time displace some forms of portrait painting’), the Sydney Morning Herald stated that Price’s work proved that it could now serve 'as a basis for artistic productions. The sun, if he dispense with the pencil, does not dispense with the brush. There is still ample scope for the artist in oils. The popular carte-de-visite has increased the demand for finished miniatures’.

Price alone was mentioned as the creative artist of these works (normally called 'oil paintings’), but there is no evidence that he took the photographs that formed their base. Imported, unimproved photographs of all sizes were readily available by this date and Price claimed no intimacy with royalty. Nor is it likely that he painted local portraits from life as he worked in conjunction with the photographer William Bradley, who would undoubtedly have taken the local photographs. Price exhibited his miniature and life-size oil portraits in a corner of Bradley’s newly opened second studio at 140 Pitt Street in June 1867; the Herald reporter especially liked 'a very charming large sized portrait of the youthful daughter of Mr. Crome of this City… The expression of the eyes and mouth is excellent; as a mere picture it would doubtless find a ready sale in London, or elsewhere’.

Also exhibited were portraits of Dr and Mrs Brereton and Sir Francis Forbes, plus his (same?) 'fine speaking likeness’ of Sir John Young on canvas. Locket-size miniatures available included portraits of Lady Young, the late Gordon Cumming of Altyre (a celebrated African lion-hunter) and the daughter of Mr Blake of Pitt Street. In November he was still painting portraits at Bradley’s studio, including several children, Mr Shepherd Smith, and Lucy, the wife of Septimus Stephen. In April 1868 Price’s portraits of the Duke of Edinburgh were commended in the press, three being small miniatures of locket size, 'all different, expressive, and characteristic portraits’. He also painted over a full-plate photographic portrait of Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, measuring about 12 × 10 inches (30.4 × 25.4 cm) – 'a good likeness with that ruddy glow of perfect health by which his Royal Highness’s face was overspread on his arrival here’ (before he was shot). The Duke was said to have purchased one to take home with him. They were on public sale in a studio Price had rented especially at 326 George Street, above MacDonnell’s (formerly Brush & MacDonnell’s) jewellery shop, where he advertised 'Miniatures or life-size likenesses of the Duke of Edinburgh, in the style approved of by H.R.H., can be supplied’.

A month later, Price advertised that he had a vacancy for a pupil to attend his lessons 'given in drawing, pencil, chalks, watercolours, oils, or on canvas, and photographs’. That year (1868) he won a prize for oil painting at the New South Wales Agricultural Society’s exhibition. By then Price was living and working in Wharf Street, Burwood, from which address he sent miniature oil portraits of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Earl and Countess of Belmore and others to the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. As 'coloured photographs’, they were officially commended by the jury. The Sydney Morning Herald noted that these 'Exquisite Miniature Portraits…command (as they have never failed to do) universal approbation’, and it is clear that little if any distinction was then being made between an original portrait from life and an overpainted photograph.

Price moved to Harris Road, Fivedock in about 1872 where he remained until 1877. Later he was at Ballarat, Victoria. Thomas Price, portraitist and art teacher, was the major organiser of a general exhibition of works of art held at the Ballarat City Hall in 1884. Sponsored by a local businessman, James Oddie, its success resulted in the formation of a committee to build the Ballarat Fine Art Public Gallery and Museum, which opened in 1887. Price was on the Committee of Management for the gallery and on its selection and hanging committees. Oddie donated twenty-four of Price’s oil portraits of early Ballarat pioneers to the gallery’s collections, presumably all still on a photographic base. William Moore said of Price that 'through a long and chequered career, his cheery optimism made him many friends’.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011