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painter and professional photographer, operated as Bradley & Co. late in 1858 at Peck & Jones’s Rotunda (formerly Smith & Sons’ Casino) on South Head Road, Sydney, having advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald of 5 November that he had just arrived from London and would offer 'Portraits in the highest style of art at moderate charges’. Eight days later Messrs Peck ( George Peck ) and Jones announced 'the extraordinary and unprecedented novelty of presenting (gratis) to each purchaser of a double ticket [to the Novelty Ball inaugurating their Rotunda Gardens], a perfectly beautiful half-guinea Portrait of himself or friend, executed in the very highest style of art, by Mr Bradley, an eminent London photographist’. The ball was held on 16 November and Bradley’s photographs gave such general satisfaction that George Peck announced that 'his second Fancy and Full Dress NOVELTY BALL’, to be held on 8 December, would also offer free portraits 'by those talented artists, Messrs. BRADLEY and CO., at the Rotunda Photographic Gallery’. This time only every seventh ticket sold would receive a free portrait, but it would be a large photograph 'splendidly mounted’ and worth a guinea and a half in comparison to the previously nominated value per portrait of half a guinea. (Bradley & Co.'s normal prices were, of course, more realistic: 'Guaranteed likeness in case, beautifully coloured for 5/-. All other sizes at half the city prices. Photographs for sending home, 3 for £1’.)

The novelty, alas, wore off. William Bradley appears to have joined Edwin Dalton 's George Street studio almost immediately after this event. In 1863 he was reported as being the operator of Dalton’s 'solar camera’, and in 1867 he claimed he had been 'for 6 years sole photographer at Dalton’s’. In 1863 64 Bradley’s mother Eliza Allen also worked at Dalton’s, as a colourist and miniature painter. Her second husband, Oswald Allen , preceded Bradley as Dalton’s operator, leaving to set up his own George Street business in 1862. Bradley joined his stepfather in January 1865 on the termination of his contract with Dalton. For some years it had been understood that he would succeed Dalton, so it appears they had quarrelled. After the dissolution of Bradley & Allen the following year, William Bradley advertised that he would make a tour of the country districts of New South Wales for 'the purpose of practising Photography in all its varied branches, including Crayon Portraits, Mezzotints, Solar Pictures, Views &c.’. The tour was to include Goulburn, Bathurst, Mudgee and the principal intermediate townships. Two months later he was back in Sydney, advertising in the Sydney Morning Herald (28 June 1866) that his 'instantaneous’ stereoscopic 'Views of the Inauguration of Prince Albert’s Statue’ and other colonial subjects could be obtained from Flavelle Brothers and from Brush & MacDonnell’s, jewellers in George Street. He announced the opening of his own photographic studio at 140 Pitt Street in the Herald on 6 October 1866, where he continued to offer photographs of the Sydney unveiling of Theed’s statue of Prince Albert. A set was subsequently presented to Queen Victoria.

Advertising as 'Artist Photographer (late of Bradley & Allen’s, from Dalton’s)’, Bradley’s repertoire in May included 'crayon portraits, either from life or copied from photographs’, although it is possible that at least some were Eliza Allen’s work. The portraitist Thomas Price also exhibited at Bradley’s studio. Yet 'an exquisitely finished likeness in coloured chalks of an Australian Beauty’, noted as being quite different from Price’s work, was fulsomely praised as being 'from Mr. Bradley’s easel’ in the Herald of 15 June 1867. It too is likely to have been an enlarged and overpainted photograph.

Bradley hung a large transparency in front of his Pitt Street shop for the royal tour of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in January 1868: 'a kit-cat portrait of the Prince’ with appropriate armorial and emblematic embellishments. On 7 April the Herald reported that Bradley’s large portrait of Prince Alfred, purchased by the Goulburn magistrates, was to hang in their room at the court-house after it had been exhibited at Goulburn’s City Book Mart. Small overpainted photographs of the arrival and departure of the royal ship Galatea by Bradley are in the Mitchell Library. In a letter to the editor of the Herald on 25 April 1868 Bradley protested about the 'wholesale piracy of photographic engravings’ and called for a copyright act, stating that he had recently lost money from pirated reproductions of his portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh. On 27 July he was complaining of the extensive piracy of his photographs of Lord and Lady Belmore, adding that his were currently on sale at various stationers and drapers’ stores in Sydney. 'A pirated or copied portrait’, he advised, 'can always be distinguished from its coarse and granular appearance’.

Bradley had an additional studio at 239 George Street in 1867 but afterwards was solely at 140 Pitt Street. He added a 'new and spacious GALLERY (lighted upon an entirely new principle)’ in 1870. In April 1872 he showed a collection of photographs at the Pitt Street Congregational Sabbath School exhibition. Bradley continued to be listed as a working photographer at various Sydney locations until 1897, his last known address being 19 Hunter Street.

Writers:

Lennon, Jane

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011