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=== Death ===
=== Death ===
Beattie died suddenly of heart disease in Hobart on 24 June 1930. He was survived by his wife  and by their two daughters. His estate was valued for probate at £871.
On his sudden death of heart disease in Hobart on 24 June 1930,<ref>{{Cite news |date=25 June 1930 |title=Family Notices |language=en |pages=1 |website=Examiner |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article51670414 |access-date=2023-05-25}}</ref> he had been the last surviving Charter member of the Hobart Lodge of the Theosophical Society.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1 July 1930 |title=Meetings |pages=11 |work=The Mercury |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article29803333 |access-date=25 May 2023}}</ref> He was survived by his wife and by their two daughters. His estate was valued for probate at £871.


== Publications ==
== Publications ==

Revision as of 06:57, 25 May 2023

John Watt Beattie
John Watt Beattie in 1920
Born(1859-08-15)15 August 1859
Aberdeen
Died24 June 1930(1930-06-24) (aged 70)
Hobart
NationalityAustralian
Educationautodidact
Known forLandscape photography
SpouseEmily Cox Cato
Awards1890: Fellow, Royal Society of Tasmania; 1996: Photographer to the Government of Tasmania


John Watt Beattie (15 August 1859–24 June 1930) was an Australian photographer

Origin

John Beattie was born on 15 August 1859 in Aberdeen, Scotland, to Esther Imlay (née Gillivray) and John Beattie, master house-painter and photographer. He had a grammar-school education and in 1878, aged nineteen, migrated to Tasmania where he started a farm in the Derwent Valley.[1] He wrote to his father decrying his prospects.[2]

Photographer

John Watt Beattie (1900) Hobart

From 1879 Beattie took up photography and was a friend of early photographer Louisa Anne Meredith in the 1880s; he records her giving him assistance, and of her showing him the "many specimens of both her own and the Bishop Nixon's photographic work in those early days of the very black art," and that she had been "instrumental in having the last remnant of the Tasmanian Aboriginals photographed for the purposes of science."[3] 

In 1882 set up in partnership with Anson Bros. who produced scenic views and whose enterprise he took over in 1891, including their negatives from which he made prints, selling them under his own name.[4] He married Emily Cox (née Cato) in 1886. Committed to Theosophy and a member its lodge in Hobart in the early 1890s, and an acolyte of Tasmanian-born painter William Pigeunit, Beattie depicted scenes of the island's beauty in the latter's romantic style for his prints, postcards, lantern-slides and albums. Undertaking extensive photography around Tasmania, as well as in the Central Highlands and on the West Coast of Tasmania, he was employed by the mining company North Mount Lyell to photograph between Gormanston and Kelly Basin in the 1890s. Davidson notes that he "saw no contradiction in [photographing for] conservation, development and tourism."[5]

A history enthusiast, the 1890s Beattie set up a museum of art and artefacts in Hobart. Appointed Photographer to the Government of Tasmania on 21 December 1896 he prepared composite pictures of the Governors of Tasmania 1804–1895, as well as Parliamentarians of Tasmania 1856–1895. In his government role he promoted tourism, Tasmania’s wealth of minerals and unique flora and fauna, and produced and distributed lantern slide shows on various subjects; A trip through Tasmania, From Kelly's Basin to Gormanston, as well as Port Arthur and Tasman Peninsula.[6] The photographs appeared posthumously in Walkabout,[7] and his images of places such as Port Arthur and the Isle of the Dead were used as postcards into the early twentieth century.[8][9] He presented at Andrew Inglis Clark’s  the Minerva Club, and with Bishop Henry Montgomery and Professor William Brown founded an Historical Section, with Beattie as its vice-president,[10] of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1899. The Society made Beattie a fellow in 1890, and for it he conducted a series of lectures during the Tasmanian centenary celebrations of 1904 (later published as Glimpses of the Lives and Times of the Early Tasmanian Governors).[11] His photographs illustrated a set of Tasmanian pictorial stamps produced 1899-1912.

Photograph taken in Fiji by John Watt Beattie, early 20th century

Beattie undertook photographic documentation in expeditions from late 1906 into the Western Pacific, including Norfolk Island. In 1912 he developed the plates Roald Amundsen made on the first trek to the South Pole. Tragically a fire destroyed Beattie's studio and the Amundsen negatives were lost; the only surviving original is a print held in the National Library of Australia which depicts a group of the Norwegians, their tent and the Norwegian flag at the South Pole.[12]

Death

On his sudden death of heart disease in Hobart on 24 June 1930,[13] he had been the last surviving Charter member of the Hobart Lodge of the Theosophical Society.[14] He was survived by his wife and by their two daughters. His estate was valued for probate at £871.

Publications

  • Beattie, John W.; Nixon, Francis Russell. Aborigines of Tasmania. Tasmania. OCLC 758406944.
  • Beattie, John Watt (1900). Port Arthur, past and present. OCLC 429667988.
  • Beattie, John W. (1890). Beauty spots of Tasmania : mountain stream and glen (12 unnumbered leaves of plates, concertina folded ed.). Hobart: J.W. Beattie. OCLC 225097390.
  • Beattie, John W. (1896). Governors of Tasmania, from 1804 to 1896. Hobart: J.W. Beattie. OCLC 221548682.
  • Beattie, John W. (1905). Port Arthur and Tasman Peninsula, illustrating the convict days of Tasmania: A descriptive lecture to accompany slides. Hobart: Mercury Office. OCLC 219904642.
  • Beattie, John W. (1911). Tasmania's West coast. Hobart: J.W. Beattie. OCLC 220915458.
  • Beattie, John W. (1912). Historical photographs relating to Tasmania. Hobart: J.W. Beattie. OCLC 222662410.
  • Beattie, John W. (1916). Souvenir of the 40th Battalion. Hobart: J.W. Beattie. OCLC 219810017.
  • Beattie, John W.; Burn, David (1930). Port Arthur, the British settlement in Tasmania : glimpses of its stirring history. Hobart: Oldham, Beddome & Meredith. OCLC 925521185.

Collections

The Launceston Corporation acquired a portion of his archive for £4500 and it is held in the Queen Victoria Museum; and slides were given to the Tasmanian Museum, Hobart after his death.[15] [16]The business he established continued selling his work until 1978.

Legacy

Beattie's work was notable in that it crystallised around a Romantic tradition that promoted a sympathetic orientation to the natural world. His sublime pictures of Tasmanian wilderness and Port Arthur in particular helped settlers and activists argue for the protection of nature through the 1890s and into the twentieth century.[17][18] Fellow photographer and historian Jack Cato held him in high estimation as 'the finest landscape photographer of his age."[19] Beattie's long commitment to theosophy, may be explained by his romanticism, but was later tempered by membership of the Methodist Church.

See also

Gallery of photographs by Beattie

  • John Watt Beattie. Thomas Chapman
    John Watt Beattie. Thomas Chapman
  • John Watt Beattie (c.1900) Mount Lyell railway showing train on King River Bridge
    John Watt Beattie (c.1900) Mount Lyell railway showing train on King River Bridge
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Man from Ambae
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Man from Ambae
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Woman from Amber
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Woman from Amber
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Women in front of a school in Lolowai
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Women in front of a school in Lolowai
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Children playing cricket at St. Barnabas, Norfolk Island
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Children playing cricket at St. Barnabas, Norfolk Island
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Lolowai Bay in Ambae, hand-coloured print
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Lolowai Bay in Ambae, hand-coloured print
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Lolowai Bay in Ambae
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Lolowai Bay in Ambae
  • John Watt Beattie (1906) Grave of Reverend Charles Godden in Lolowai
    John Watt Beattie (1906) Grave of Reverend Charles Godden in Lolowai

References

  1. ^ Roe, Michael, "Beattie, John Watt (1859–1930)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 24 May 2023
  2. ^ RS 2912, Extract from Pocket Notebook of J. W. Beattie, Royal Society of Tasmania, MSS Collection.
  3. ^ Beattie quoted in the Tasmanian Mail, 26 October 1895
  4. ^ Annear, Judy, ed. (2015). The Photograph and Australia. Sydney, N.S.W: Art Gallery of New South Wales. p. 273. ISBN 9781741741162. OCLC 897460459.
  5. ^ Davidson, Kathleen (2015). "Place". In Annear, Judy (ed.). The Photograph and Australia. Sydney, N.S.W: Art Gallery of New South Wales. p. 177. ISBN 9781741741162. OCLC 897460459.
  6. ^ p.6 and 7 of Tassell and Wood
  7. ^ Dunbabin, Thomas (1 June 1935). "Cliff-climbers of Tasman Isle : Men who dared the Southern Ocean in boats of bark". Walkabout. 1 (8): 33–4.
  8. ^ Jones-Travers, Jennifer K. (2016). "Historical Archaeology of Tourism at Port Arthur, Tasmania, 1885-1960". Unpublished PHD Dissertation, Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University: chp 5.
  9. ^ Beattie, John. W. "Among the Tombs, Dead Island, Port Arthur". National Museum of Australia. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
  10. ^ "The Late Mr. J. B. Walker - Funeral Obsequies". The Mercury. 7 November 1899. p. 2. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
  11. ^ Beattie, William Watt (1905). Glimpses of the Lives and Times of the Early Tasmanian Governors. Being lectures, etc. [With plates.] Hobart: Davis Bros. OCLC 557579683.
  12. ^ Lund, H.O. (September 2010). "The South Pole in 'Tasmanian Views"". The National Library Magazine. 2 (3). Canberra: National Library of Australia: 21.
  13. ^ "Family Notices". Examiner. 25 June 1930. p. 1. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
  14. ^ "Meetings". The Mercury. 1 July 1930. p. 11. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
  15. ^ Tassell, Margaret; Wood, David (1981). Tasmanian Photographer – From the John Watt Beattie Collection – From the Collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. South Melbourne: Macmillan Company of Australia. ISBN 0-333-33737-9.
  16. ^ Hosking, M. (2012). Displaying the Convict Era: the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and its Purchase of the Beattie Collection (Honours Thesis ed.). School of History and Classics, University of Tasmania.
  17. ^ Hore, Jarrod (2017). "'Beautiful Tasmania’: environmental consciousness in John Watt Beattie’s romantic wilderness". History Australia. 14 (1): 48-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2017.1286710
  18. ^ Hore, Jarrod (2 March 2017). "'Beautiful Tasmania': environmental consciousness in John Watt Beattie's romantic wilderness". History Australia. 14 (1): 48–66. doi:10.1080/14490854.2017.1286710. S2CID 152257854.
  19. ^ Cato, Jack (1955). The Story of the Camera in Australia. [With photographs.] Melbourne: Georgian House. OCLC 557556364.

External links

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