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portrait painter and professional photographer, second son of Maria and John Skinner Prout , was born in Bristol, Somerset on 9 December 1835. He accompanied his parents to Sydney in the Royal Sovereign , arriving on 16 December 1840, and presumably returned to England with them in 1848. By 1860 he was again in Sydney working as a photographer, but he soon returned to England and established a reputation as 'one of the best art-photographers in London’. The Interior of the Abbey of Westminster , Prout’s album of 23 mounted prints, was published in London by Colnaghi in 1860; The Thames from London to Oxford in Forty Photographs was issued in two portfolios of 20 photographs in 1862. In 1863 the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

He is at present at Abergeldie Castle, in Scotland, whither he was invited to go by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. He has taken the portraits of both the Prince and Princess of Wales, besides being invited by the Countess of Fife to her seat at a grand affair—the gathering of the clans. The Prince and Princess of Wales were present. Victor attended the ball and dinner parties, and his name flourished in all the papers. He gallantly threw down (like another Raleigh) his plaid for the Princess of Wales to walk upon on descending from her carriage. This is all likely to do him a great deal of good.

A Series of Photographs illustrating the Visit of Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales to Mar Lodge, the Seat of the Right Hon. the Earl and Countess of Fife, during the Bramer Gathering of 1863 , a set of 70 albumen prints, was issued from Baker Street, London, in 1864. In 1866 it was reported that he had photographed Pompeii 'under the immediate patronage of his Majesty Victor Emmanuel of Italy’.

Prout returned to Sydney in 1866. Soon afterwards, it was announced that he had agreed to join James and William Freeman at 392 George Street, 'henceforth [to] be known as Messrs. Freeman, Brothers and Prout’. They sold Prout’s cartes-de-visite of the Prince and Princess of Wales from their studio. One showed the Prince in Highland dress, the other the couple together, the Princess, despite being a 'fair daughter of Denmark’, being reassuringly judged 'a very pleasing English-looking young lady, in a walking dress’. With this lure the firm immediately captured Governor Sir John and Lady Young as patrons. They specialised in life-size enlargements of 'unerring fidelity’ taken with the new apparatus which had accompanied Prout and James Freeman to the colony.

So successful was the firm that it opened a custom-built and much larger studio at 141 Castlereagh Street early in 1867. It incorporated a 'public reception and picture gallery leading to a retiring room for ladies and children … and connected immediately with the studio, which is the most spacious and well ventilated in Sydney … A private painting room is devoted for the sittings and finishing of the large portraits which Messrs. Freeman and Prout have introduced with signal success’. There was also an outdoor gallery for equestrian portraits, groups, horses, dogs, etc.—the only gallery of this type in the colony, the firm boasted.

Prout claimed to have invented a panoramic camera which 'travels on a central point, so that a much larger range of vision can be included than by any ordinary photographic apparatus’. Almost immediately after returning to Sydney in 1866, he advertised 50 panoramic views he had taken with it ('intended to illustrate Mrs Hall’s new work “On the Thames”’). Freeman Brothers & Prout exhibited about 50 photographic views of Sydney buildings and scenery at the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition, described in the Sydney Morning Herald in November 1866 before their despatch to Paris as 'views of most of the private villas in the suburbs on Sydney, some exceedingly striking bits of natural scenery, and a few of our most noted public buildings … So closely has the photographist copied nature, that in some cases colouring alone is required to complete the illusion’. The views of the public buildings (the Herald office excepted) alone were judged less than perfect, having suffered from the fact that tiny flaws were necessarily enlarged with the rest of the image from the small glass-plate negatives. Nevertheless, the collection received a prize.

In 1868 Prout took two photographs of the steamship Morpeth which he presented to the governor and the Duke of Edinburgh, the latter having taken a trip up the Hunter River aboard it while in Sydney. Prince Alfred was pleased to accept this enlarged photograph, yet Freeman & Prout do not seem to have received a royal warrant, unlike numerous other photographers throughout the Australian colonies. By April 1868 Prout alone was proprietor of the (renumbered) Castlereagh Street studios, the Freemans having moved to the rooms formerly occupied by Edwin Dalton and Thomas Felton . Still advertising as 'Photographer to their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales’ and winner of 'the first Prize at the late International Exhibition’, Prout offered photographs finished in oil, watercolour, crayon and, especially, newly and beautifully enamelled from his 'Photographic and Fine Art Studio’. (Barcroft Boake, q.v., claimed in 1868 that no enamelling process was or could be permanent, including Prout’s, and no surviving examples are known.)

Prout’s major interest was always portraiture. He advertised the availability of a 'fine characteristic Portrait’ (presumably a carte-de-visite) of Dr Bland in the Sydney Morning Herald on 26 July 1868, Bland having died a few days earlier. His carte-de-visite print of Conrad Martens is in one of the Camden Park albums (ML). He also worked at the Australian Museum, re-photographing specimens and enlarging several to life-size, including his own photograph of the museum’s (live) bearded lizard. His enlargement of Henry Barnes 's photograph of the museum’s live diamond snake was especially praised by Director Gerard Krefft in an address he gave to the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1868, when he was hoping to have it lithographed. Davies and Stanbury state that in 1870 Prout introduced the autotype to Australia, a carbon printing process resulting in a print resembling an engraving. That year Prout was one of the photography judges at the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, but soon after moved his studio to 324 George Street and sold out to Henry Beaufoy Merlin , who was advertising from this address in December.

Prout then set up as a portrait painter. Although considered one of the first to make such a reversal Myra Felton (at least) had preceded him. He showed paintings, not photographs, with the Academy of Art in 1872. His oil on canvas portrait of Thomas Barker of Bringelly (SU, 1873) was commissioned for presentation to the University of Sydney, of which Barker had been an early benefactor. This 'Bishop’s half-length’ portrait, showing Barker seated in his study surrounded by 'cleverly reproduced’ accessories, was praised in the Sydney Morning Herald of 10 October 1873, the reporter adding: 'This is by no means the first portrait in which Mr. V.A. Prout has achieved a decided success in the new branch of art to which he has turned his attention’. The University of Sydney showed it at the 1874 Agricultural Society Exhibition, where Prout himself showed four portraits and three crayon drawings: Bull’s Head , Deer and Portrait of a Lady . Prout probably continued to work from photographs; the Barker portrait has a flat photographic appearance, and in 1874 he was again listed as a professional photographer, now of 153 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011