engraver, produced copperplate line engravings of views and events in Sydney in the 1840s and 1850s, e.g. The Turning of the Turf of the First Australian Railway by the Hon. Mrs. Keith Stewart, daughter of His Excellency Sir Chas Augustus Fitz Roy, Governor &c. &c., July 3 1850 (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, (ML SSVI/RAI/1)), a small engraving showing masonic groups with their banners gathered in a semi-circle around the edge of the festivities. (There is some speculation this work was after an original by John Rae .) He also engraved St. Philip’s New Church, Sydney (late 1850s) and illustrations for Frank Kennedy, the Australian Settler (c.1847). His engraved cover of the New South Wales Sporting Magazine (nos 1 4, October 1848-January 1849) was after a design by Edward Winstanley . Etchings for the Australasian Sporting Magazine are: Tempe (vol 1, no.2, November 1850, the seat of A. B. Spark, Esq., 'from an original drawing, reduced and executed by Harris’, copy National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), A Squatter’s Head Station (January 1851) and Going to Cover (December 1850), the last after 'R.T.T.’. Getting up a Gumtree (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, SSV/3), a very spidery Aboriginal figure in a tree, is labelled 'V.1 No.4’ so was evidently a plate in a book too. A separate portrait of the Baptist minister Rev. John Saunders is signed 'W. Harris sculpt’ with no original artist acknowledged. Nevertheless, Harris seems to have been almost exclusively a reproductive and trade engraver at this time. He may, however, be the William Harris who was listed as an artist in Sands Sydney Directory for 1867, living at Camperdown Road, Camperdown. In 1877 this same William Harris moved to Macleay Street, Potts Point.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
