Alfred Bock ca. 1880
State Library of Tasmania
Title: Alfred Bock c1880
Creator(s): Bartlett, R. H
Date: 1880
Description: 1 photograph : b&w. ; 13 X 8 cm.
Notes: Exact measurements of copy: 129 x 77 mm, Title inscribed in pencil on verso in unknown hand., Head and shoulders inclined to right., B&w copy of sepia cabinet photograph in Bock purchase 1969.
Location: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
ADRI: AUTAS001125882209
This notice appeared in the Tasmanian Mercury, 22nd May 1900:
PERSONAL: – Mr Alfred Bock, writing from Auburn, Victoria, intimates that he is not dead, neither is he “the late Mr. Bock”, as stated in a note under a picture of the late Mr Boyd in a recent copy of “The Tasmanian Mail.” He adds:- “I suppose by the ‘late Mr. Bock’ it means to refer to my father, but he never took a photograph in his life. The picture was actually taken by me on the occasion of my visiting Port Arthur at the request on the officers of the station for the purpose of painting a portrait of Mr Boyd for presentation to that gentleman; I think about 1863 or 1864; I am not quite sure as to the year. I should be glad if you could make the correction, especially as some of my friends have been inquiring about my decease.
Apart from the refutation of the expertise of his father Thomas Bock as a daguerreotypist, this notice is interesting in that it places Alfred Bock at Port Arthur around the dates 1863 and 1865, accompanied by his apprentice and successor Thomas Nevin in all likelihood. The painting in question (below, left) was the official presentation gift, but there were more images than just one by Bock of this particular individual, James Boyd, Commandant of the Port Arthur prison site.
Portraits of James Boyd by Alfred Bock ca 1864
At left is an example of Alfred Bock’s solar-enlarged photography which he may have devised from technical instructions published in The Photographic News, 1863. The catalogue entry from State Library of Tasmania for the painting (left) reads:Title: Mr. James Boyd
Creator(s): Bock, Alfred, 1835-1920
Date: 1866
Description: 1 photograph : sepia ; 15 x 10 cm.
Notes: Exact measurements : 144 x 100 mm, Title inscribed in ink on card mount centred below image., “Mercury 10/8/66, Portrait by Mr. Alfred Bock, presented to Jas. Boyd, 2/8/66″ inscribed in pencil on verso., Original created by Alfred Bock., Photograph of an oil painting, painted over solar-enlarged photograph, head and shoulders inclined to left.
Subjects: Boyd, James – fl. 1866
Location: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
ADRI: AUTAS001125882142
The photograph (right) is also attributed to Alfred Bock of James Boyd and his horse, taken at Port Arthur ca. 1865.
Title: James Boyd, Commandant P. Arthur
Creator(s): Bock, Alfred, 1835-1920
Date: 186-?
Description: 1 photograph : sepia ; 10 x 6 cm.
Notes: Exact measurements : 93 x 58 mm, Title inscribed in pencil on verso in unknown hand., Full length photograph of James Boyd standing beside his horse.
Location: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
ADRI: AUTAS001125882134
Alex Graeme-Evans in A Short History Guide to Port Arthur 1830-77 (Regal, 2001) has some interesting data on James Boyd.
As the longest serving Commandant at Port Arthur (1853-71) he was responsible for applying Panopticon principles of penal discipline which – when applied through the methods endured in the Model and Separate Prison Dumb Cells constructed under his governance – resulted in creating severe mental disabilities among prisoners rather than the hoped for rehabilitation.
James Boyd was a career Prison Administrator, and was paid handsomely for his ambition: 600 pounds p.a. compared with the 200 pounds p.a. of his predecessor Courtney. He was also involved in corruption, having given the Comptroller General Hampton for his residence at Boa Vista New Town a quantity of stone quarried by the convicts while under his care.
Adolarius Humphrey Boyd succeeded James Boyd (no relative, although this same A.H. Boyd was employed at the prison as an accountant from 1853) to the position of Commandant at Port Arthur from 1st June 1871 to January 1, 1874 when Dr John Coverdale assumed the post of Surgeon-Commandant (Australian Dictionary of Biography).
James Boyd, Port Arthur Commandant ca. 1860s. Unattributed.
This image is scanned from page 54 of the publication, Australia: Image of a Nation 1850-1950 by David Moore and Rodney Hall (Collins 1983). The accompanying caption reads:Naturally the brutalization affected more than the convicts themselves. How clearly pity should also be felt for their persecutors is shown in this picture of James Boyd, Commandant of Port Arthur in the 1860s. Was it a convict-photographer who arranged the curtain and plaster bust with mock artistry and saw the effect of including so much of the jangling carpet and fussy furniture? Unknown. n.d.
Their source is given as Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Melbourne 1958-78-16 QVM File 441. The QVMAG is in Launceston, not Melbourne, and this is yet another example of the valuable photographic holdings of the QVMAG in their files which are not available to the public online. Dozens of Thomas Nevin’s Port Arthur convict photographs were found among the QVMAG holdings in 1977, copies by J. W. Beattie included. However, Nevin was not a convict, and it is important to ask why this entry by Rodney Hall should speculate about a “convict-photographer” . W.P. Dowling is the only well-known ex-convict Tasmanian photographer. The assumption may have derived from a reference to the convicts’ cartes by T.J. Nevin held at the Archives Office of Tasmania in a letter to the National Library from the AOT dated 1982, a year before this publication by Moore and Hall, which referred to the convict photographer – meaning, in context, the photographer of convicts, T.J. Nevin [NEVIN File, NLA].
Attribution could well rest on the details of the decor and carpet pattern, although this photograph looks as though it was taken in situ in the Commandant’s office rather than in a studio. Photographic studios often shared or inherited carpets, chairs, tables and wall-hangings from other studios, however, through Charles Woolley’s furniture warehouse. It may be the photograph Bock claims he took of Boyd as a preliminary to painting the portrait.
These three photographs could provide more information. The official is Superintendent of Police Richard Propsting. He is standing next to the same desk as the one pictured in the photograph of James Boyd. This photograph too is unattributed.
Archives Office of Tasmania
Above: Superintendent of Police Richard Propsting
Ref: 30-282c . Date: 1870
Below: Police Office, Commandant’s Office, Port Arthur
Inscription on front bears the name of photographer ANSON.
Ref: 30-2068. Date: 1880
Richard Propsting enlisted Thomas Nevin as Special Constable during the Chiniquy riots of June 1879 at the Hobart Town Hall. This portrait could be by Thomas Nevin of his supervisor, taken ca 1870 at Port Arthur in the same room occupied by James Boyd until 1871. That some convicts were photographed in 1870 is evidenced by the portrait of James Martin, held at the Archives Office of Tasmania:
PH30/1/2023
Title: Portrait of James Martin
Subject: convicts, people, portraits
Locality: not identified
Date: 1870
Photographic portrait of JAMES, Martin
In a letter to the NLA from the AOT in 1982, this portrait was mentioned as one of a set of ten mounted photographs “which came from the Ratcliffe [sic - Radcliffe] Museum at Port Arthur” [NEVIN file, NLA].
The ANSON photograph shows a room carefully arranged for the tourists. It may be how Dr Coverdale, the last incumbent to the position of Commandant left it. It could not have been taken by Anson earlier, during Coverdale’s tenure which terminated in September 1877, since Joshua Anson was serving a prison sentence for theft from his employer, photographer H.H. Baily, at the Hobart Gaol between July 1877 and late 1878, during the dying days of the Port Arthur prison. If it indeed represents a working office, it must be a reprint of an earlier photographer’s work, someone working closely with police at Port Arthur. The Anson brothers (there was only Josh, who called himself John after his release from prison in 1878) and his brother Henry who died in 1890 (the third brother Richard died in infancy) bought Samuel Clifford’s studio and stock in 1878. Included in that purchase were photographs and stereographs by Clifford & Nevin taken and printed during their partnership in the early 1870s.
Were photographs taken of convicts at Port Arthur by Nevin in the 1860s? Carolyn Strange seemed to have gained that impression on a visit to Port Arthur in 2000. It is entirely possible, as landscape stereographs of the site exist at the SLT dated to 1868 which could only have been taken by Clifford & Nevin.
State Library of Tasmania. Ref:AUTAS001124851726
Other photographs in public collections bearing Bock and Nevin’s stamp for The City Photographic Establishment and attributed to Alfred Bock include this one of the Officers’ Cricket Team at Port Arthur, taken no doubt at the behest of the officers who requested a portrait of James Boyd ca 1864:
Alfred Bock’s portrait of the Port Arthur Cricket Team 1860s
State Library of Tasmania
Title: Officers at Port Arthur Cricket Team
Creator(s):Bock, Alfred, 1835-1920
Date: Between 1858 and 1867
Description: 1 photograph mounted on board : sepia toned ; 7 x 10 cm.
Notes: Exact measurements of image: 58 x 95 mm., Title derived from note inscribed in pencil on verso by unknown hand., Alfred Bock’s trademark for his studio at 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart on verso.
Location: Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
ADRI: AUTAS001126187517
A short history is included on this site of Alfred Bock’s career in Tasmania to his insolvency in August 1865 when he sold his studio and stock in trade to Nevin.
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