ALEXANDER SCHRAMM, (1814 – 1864, German/Australian), BUSH VISITORS, 1859, oil on canvas SIGNED: originally signed, dated and inscribed verso: A Schramm / Adelaide / 1859 original frame by David Culley, Adelaide (label attached verso) DIMENSIONS: 68.5 x 91.5 cm PROVENANCE: Mr Henry Muirhead, Adelaide, acquired in 1859 Thence by descent Nancy Muirhead, Adelaide Thence by descent Private collection, Adelaide EXHIBITED: South Australian Art Union Exhibition, Chamber of the House of Assembly, Adelaide, 5 October – 17 October 1859, cat.70 On long term loan to The Adelaide Club, Adelaide, 1994 – 2018 LITERATURE: Catalogue of Pictures and Other Works of Art Collected for Exhibition in the House of Assembly, South Australian Society of Arts, Adelaide, 4 October 1859, cat. 70 ‘Exhibition of Works of Art’, The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 October 1859, p. 2 ‘South Australian Art-Union Exhibition’, The South Australian Register, Adelaide, 5 October 1859, p. 3 (as ‘Blacks at a Cottage Door’) ‘Second Day’, The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 8 October 1859, p. 2 (supplement) (as ‘Blacks at a Cottage Door’) ‘South Australian Society of Arts’, The South Australian Register, Adelaide, 18 October 1859, p. 5 (as ‘Blacks at a Cottage Door’) ‘The Society of Arts’, The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 22 October 1859, p. 1 ‘Society of Arts’, The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 25 October 1859, p. 2 (as ‘South Australian Homestead’) ‘Schramm’s Picture’, The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 28 October 1859, p. 2 ‘South Australian Society of Arts’, The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 1 (supplement) ‘South Australia’, The Argus, Melbourne, 29 October 1859, p. 5 ‘Schramm’s Picture’, South Australian Weekly Chronicle, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 1 ‘South Australian Society of Arts’, The South Australian Register, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 3 ‘South Australian Society of Arts’, The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 3 RELATED WORK: A scene in South Australia, c.1850, oil on canvas, 41.0 x 47.5 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide A scene in South Australia, c.1854 – 58, lithograph, 24.9 x 35.7 cm, Penman and Galbraith, Adelaide, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne ESSAY: Alexander Schramm is recognised as the most accomplished professional artist active in colonial South Australia and the first to be trained in art beyond Britain. He won a series of prizes at the South Australian Society of Arts exhibitions of the 1850s and 1860s, before his untimely death in November 1864, aged just 50 years. In contrast to his colonial contemporaries though, Schramm produced work in markedly different styles and genres, bringing ‘a sophisticated and wide-ranging background of artistic experience to South Australia’.1 Within barely a decade, Schramm produced finely wrought oil portraits of Adelaide gentry, an outstanding religious painting, a range of small chalk and watercolour drawings of Aboriginal people and colonists which are quite casual in style, the largest oil paintings depicting Aboriginal people and their social life to have been produced in Australia, lithographs of colonial scenes, and even a plaster bust of an Adelaide notable. His work could be sharply defined and filled with light and colour or shadowed and blurred in gloom and melancholy. This great range seems grounded in his artistic training and career in Europe as well his extraordinary intellect, which was sharply critical of colonial realities. If any single painting by Alexander Schramm serves as an entrée to his Australian career it would be Bush Visitors, painted in 1859, a decade after his arrival in South Australia. This large oil painting has been held in the same family since its original purchase in 1859 by the King William Street watch-maker and jeweller, Henry Muirhead. The painting depicts a group of ten Aboriginal men, women and children (in European clothing, apart from one woman wearing a skin cloak), gathered at the door of a settler’s cottage, importuning the woman of the house while other members of the household observe the situation. What might be interpreted as a straight-forward scene of colonial begging or charity is rendered ambiguous by the friendliness and engagement implicit in the encounter, and by Schramm’s facility in entangling his subjects within a single frame of sociality. The painting is one of Schramm’s larger works and remains in its original frame, fashioned in Adelaide by the city’s first professional framemaker David Culley. On its reverse the painting still bears the original 1859 catalogue number, ‘70’. Schramm entered Bush Visitors, together with several others, in the section devoted to local artists in the wide-ranging ‘South Australian Art Union Exhibition’ which opened on 4 October 1859 in the Chamber of the House of Assembly on North Terrace. While a newspaper report first noted the painting as No.70, Blacks at a Cottage Door, the exhibition catalogue printed a few days later retitled it as Bush Visitors. The Advertiser reviewer wrote, equivocally enough: Mr Schramm, an old colonist, has contributed a great number of very spirited oil paintings: in the majority of instances containing groups of aboriginal natives, which have a particularly natural, picturesque, ragged and vagabond appearance. Even the gum trees of Mr Schramm’s pictures wear a scraggy aspect, which is rather an exaggeration than otherwise of the deformities of Australian foliage. Still the pictures have a merit of their own, which any careful observer cannot fail to notice, and the grouping of his natives is both characteristic and successful.2 The exhibition committee initially awarded first prize to James Hazell-Adamson, however following his controversial elimination on the grounds that he was not resident in South Australia, Schramm received first prize for Bush Visitors. At the age of 35 Schramm travelled to Australia on the Prinzessin Luise, sailing from Hamburg in March 1849 and arriving at Port Adelaide on 7 August. The passenger list has been described as ‘the single most important group of German intellectuals to come to Adelaide’ and included the botanist and Adelaide Botanic Gardens Director, Richard Schomburgk, musicians and composers Gustav Esselbach and Carl Linger, the naturalist Marianne Kreusler, scientists and politicians, as well as the sculptor Emil Todt. After little more than a year Schramm became a naturalised citizen. His first major oil painting in Australia, Adelaide, a tribe of natives on the banks on the River Torrens, was completed in 1850. Now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia it was originally sold to the Adelaide businessman, C.S. Penny. By the mid-1850s it seems that Schramm was able to make a living through his art, and Aboriginal subjects (often in combination with Europeans) comprised at least half of his output. Several of these works were lithographs, which Schramm began producing for a wider market from 1854, using the Adelaide printing firm of Penman and Galbraith.3 It seems that these lithographs generally preceded paintings in oil, and this was the case for the lithograph A Scene in South Australia (probably produced between 1854 – 1858), on which this work was based. A smaller painting, closer in detail to the lithograph, A Scene in South Australia, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.4 Schramm produced two bodies of work depicting Aboriginal people. The first was characterised by large-scale ambitious paintings that depicted entire encampments comprising up to a hundred figures and the second consisted of simple studies of allegorical encounters between Aboriginal people and Europeans or individual studies of Aboriginal people. Schramm did not attempt any purely ‘ethnographic’ studies in South Australia and instead, his work seems calibrated to the realities of the colonial frontier, assessing and even judging the effects of European contact, even though some of these simpler works strayed close to caricature. A lithograph of the scene depicted in Bush Visitors was purchased in Adelaide in 1858 by the writer, David Liston, and sent to a friend in England5 with the following inscription which provides fascinating information regarding the scene: Adelaide Oct 10 1858. Dear Bob I met with the annexed Lithograph, & have sent it to you, the characters are all Portraits, I know them all & can avouch for its correctness. – The Scene is a cottage on the North Park Lands, near the Native Camp, it is Washing Day the Iron Pot, heating the Water out-side — The Group of Natives, just returning to Camp, from a days begging in Adelaide, accompanied by a troop of Dogs — The principal character is "Old King William". The Woman on his right his Lubra. (i.e. Wife) the others his family — the whole [(] Dogs included [)] is true to life. "Old King William" is well known in Adelaide & is so named from his resemblance to that Monarch, he came to Town every morning in a clean White Shirt & carried his spear, his hair White & gait stately, his Wife has a load on her head, some of the others at their backs, where one of the Women carries her "Piccanini." — the children are invariably naked, the Men & Women but scantily clothed, you will notice their Arms & Legs are very thin & deficient of Muscle, their hands & feet seem a grade between the Ourang Outang & a perfect human development, in their rambles they are always accompanied by a large troop of hungry looking Dogs — the countenance of the "old King" is a little too severe — in begging he never takes less than a silver Sixpence, if less be offered, it is given to his Lubra or children — I have endeavoured to fold so as not to injure the faces, & perhaps you may take the creases out — We are all well & write in kindest love & regards to you all & to all old friends; Yours truly D. L[iston]. M Robt Hart.; inscribed in pen and brown ink on reverse (vertically) u.r.: You will notice the Women as well as Men smoke. This annotation shifts what might otherwise be regarded as a hypothetical, even allegorical scene, into the realm of colonial reality. Despite the reference, the actual site of the image remains difficult to identify although it was probably near the present site of the Adelaide Zoo’s main entrance, adjacent to the parklands. The cottage depicted may well be ‘Park Cottage’, a property owned by the South Australia Company which in 1857, was rented by a G.W.Hawkes. Hawkes had been a book-keeper for the company but by the time Schramm’s lithograph and painting were made he was Secretary of the nearby St Peters Collegiate School. Later secretary of the Art Union of London and South Australia, Hawkes was also a member of the Aborigines Friends Association and it is this, coupled with the friendly attitude shown by the settlers depicted in the painting towards the Aboriginal figures, that points to their identification as Hawkes and his wife. For some time the identity of ‘King William’ has been a mystery, however during July 1844 an Aboriginal man known by this name was charged with the attempted murder of a shepherd near Clare and sentenced to imprisonment. It was noted at that time that this man, whose Aboriginal name was Tangko Milaitye, spoke good English.6 Three years later he was released from prison and pardoned so that he might be engaged as a court interpreter – an initiative prompted by an increasing number of court cases involving Aboriginal people from north of Adelaide.7 It appears that he then took up residence in the North Parklands encampment, with his extended family, who became familiar figures to Adelaide townspeople, and subjects for Schramm’s pencil. King William also appeared in several of Schramm’s paintings. Bush Visitors occupies an important place in Australian art history, marking a fundamental shift in the way in which colonists understood their new land, and their place in it, especially in relation to the Aboriginal people whose dislocation and dispossession Alexander Schramm placed at the very centre of his work. For, while certain critics found Schramm’s works confronting, he was awarded prizes year after year and was patronised by several of the most influential families in South Australia. His art played a crucial role in marking the effects and impact of European colonialism in a colony which placed great store on its capacity to moderate those effects. Importantly, the mirror which Schramm held up to the colonial frontier still retains the capacity to reflect, even today. 1. Hylton, J., South Australia Illustrated. Colonial Painting in the Land of Promise, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2012, p. 126 2. ‘Exhibition of Works of Art’, South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 October 1859, p. 2 3. Schramm’s simple lithograph of Murray River watercraft at Swan Hill was published in James Allen’s Journal of an experimental trip by the ‘Lady Augusta’ on the River Murray. (1853, Platts, Adelaide). Schramm was not on the voyage but completed the lithograph from a sketch. Schramm may have produced lithographs in Adelaide as early as 1850 (Natives of South Australia, for example), printed by the firm Penman and Galbraith. 4. The Art Gallery of South Australia gives the date for the painting A Scene in South Australia as c.1850, however it is possible that it was produced after both the lithograph and the version currently on offer. See Jones, P., ‘Bush Visitors: Alexander Schramm and his colonial encounters’, unpublished manuscript, Adelaide, 2015, pp. 21 – 22 5. The print is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. This letter is also mentioned in Hylton, op. cit., p. 134. See also Jones, P., ‘ A Scene in South Australia by Alexander Schramm and Winter encampments by Eugene von Guérard’, Bunbury, A. (ed.), This Wondrous Land. Colonial Art on Paper, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 98 – 99 6. Southern Australian, Adelaide, 5 July 1844, p. 3 7. South Australian Register, Adelaide, 17 March 1847, p. 3 PHILIP JONES
ALEXANDER SCHRAMM (1814-1864) Civilization Versus Nature Natives on the Tramp Bushing It: Morning Halt by the Way 1859 set of four lithographs published Penman & Gailbraith, Adelaide each titled and inscribed in printed text on margin three signed in plate: A Schramm (one dated 1859) 16 x 23.5 cm oval each (plate size) 25.5 x 31.5 cm each (sheet size)
SCHRAMM, Alexander (c.1814-1864): Native Encampment in South Australia. [Adelaide, Penman and Galbraith, circa 1859]. Notes: An original hand-coloured tinted lithograph (printed surface 325 x 445 mm), recently matted outside the printed border, framed and glazed; restoration to two small damaged areas; uneven discolouration (most likely from an acidic mount); notwithstanding, this is still an acceptable example of a rare print.
SCHRAMM, Alexander (c.1814-1864): South Australian Natives on the Tramp. Notes: An original colour lithograph (image size 295 x 430 mm, visible paper size 330 x 450 mm), recently matted, framed and glazed; plain background a little tanned, with minimal expert restoration to an unprinted portion near the top left-hand corner of the image; overall, in very attractive condition. Published by Penman and Galbraith, Adelaide, circa 1859.
SCHRAMM, Alexander (c.1814-1864): 'A Scene in South Australia'. Notes: An original lithograph (image size 237 x 347 mm, trimmed slightly from its stated published size of 245 x 356 mm), recently laid down on an acid-free mount, framed and glazed; apart from a short sealed tear to an unprinted portion in the top centre of the print, it is in very good condition. Published by Penman and Galbraith, Adelaide, circa 1859, it is closely based on Schramm's oil painting of the same name (circa 1850), in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Carroll 35.
ALEXANDER SCHRAMM 1813-1864 Bush Visitors 1859 oil on canvas signed, dated and inscribed 'A. Schramm / Adelaide / 1859' verso frame: original, David Culley, Adelaide (label verso) 68.5 x 91.5 cm PROVENANCE Mr Henry Muirhead, Adelaide, acquired in 1859 Private Collection, Adelaide, by descent from the above EXHIBITED Catalogue of Pictures and Other Works of Art Collected for Exhibition in the House of Assembly, South Australian Society of Arts, Chamber House of Assembly, Adelaide, 4 October 1859, no. 70 On long term loan to The Adelaide Club, Adelaide, 1994-2013 LITERATURE 'Exhibition of Works of Art', The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 October 1859, p. 2 'South Australian Art-Union Exhibition', The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 October 1859, p. 3 'Second Day', The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 8 October 1859, p. 2 (supplement) 'South Australian Society of Arts', The South Australian Register, Adelaide, 18 October 1859, p. 5 'Society of Arts', The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 22 October 1859, p. 1 (supplement) The South Australian Advertiser, Adelaide, 28 October 1859, p. 2 'South Australian Society of Arts', The Adelaide Observer, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 3 'South Australia', The Argus, Melbourne, 29 October 1859, p. 5 'South Australian Society of Arts', The South Australian Weekly Chronicle, Adelaide, 29 October 1859, p. 1 (supplement)
Alexander Schramm 1813-1864 AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE (CIRCA 1859) oil on canvas frame: original, A. Molton, Adelaide 38.7 X 33.2CM PROVENANCE The Hon. John Bristow Hughes, Adelaide Private Collection, Adelaide By descent Private Collection, Adelaide
Alexander Schramm 1813-1864 NATIVE ENCAMPMENT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA (CIRCA 1859) oil on canvas 49.5 X 67.7CM PROVENANCE Possibly Mr Cyril Prockter, South Australia Fine Pictures: Australian and European, Theodore Bruce, Adelaide, 12 December 1978, lot 200, 'Aboriginal Encampment', illustrated Private Collection, Adelaide PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, ADELAIDE
Oil on canvas Signed and dated 'Adelaide 1.50' lower right Provenance Chard & Rabbitts, Adelaide; purchased by Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Limited, 16 December 1966; transferred to Elders IXL in 1985 Portrait of Australia Collection,Foster's Group Limited Exhibited The Australian Aboriginal portrayed in Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 8 March - 7 April 1974 Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2 March - 1 April 1984, cat. 34, illus. Portrait of Australia: The Elders IXL Collection, national tour, 1985-1988, cat. 1, illus. Treasures from Private Collections, National Gallery Women's Association, Sotheby's, Melbourne, 5-12 September 1993 Reference Ron Appleyard, 'Alexander Schramm, painter', Bulletin of the Art Gallery of South Australia, vol. 37, 1979, pp. 26-41 Geoffrey Dutton, White on Black, the Australian Aboriginal portrayed in Art, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1974, pl. XVII Ron Radford, Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1984, p. 15, cat. 34, illus. Ron Radford, Pamela Luhrs et al., Portrait of Australia, Elders IXL Collection, Elders IXL, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 6-7, illus. pl. 1 Although Alexander Schramm had studied at Berlin Academy of Art, worked in Italy and Poland and exhibited successfully in Germany, he decided in 1849 to try his fortune as an emigrant to South Australia. Perhaps the move was for his health; or due to the political unrest in Berlin in 1848. During his fifteen years in Adelaide he seems to have lived very humbly -- possibly working as a mattress-maker as well as a painter. He won prizes at the South Australian Society of Arts, received a number of commissions and is also known to have produced sculpture and lithographs. However, as his first biographer related in 1898, he often parted with paintings for 'far beneath their real value'. He was 'an artist by nature and training, small in stature, dark, and somewhat retiring in disposition, he made but few intimates'. He died of tuberculosis in 1864, a pauper with no family, aged only fifty.(1) Schramm's life story is a sad one but his contribution to Australian art was unique. Schramm was the first professional artist to depict the dry local landscape and sparsely foliaged gum trees of his adopted South Australian homeland. Indeed, at the Society of Arts' sixth annual exhibition, one reviewer wrote that his depictions of Australian scenery were better than those of any other artist. Of the very few of his paintings that survive, the Foster's Adelaide Tribe of Natives is among the finest and is the largest depicting Aborigines in their natural setting. Here Schramm has recorded, with great sympathy, a quite extensive encampment of the Kaurna Tribe who, in the 1850s, still inhabited the Adelaide Plains. Historians have observed that such a large congregation of the Tribe would have been unusual -- perhaps even unlikely -- for family groups were mostly small and formed sporadic camps. However, this is not a nostalgic depiction of Aboriginal life before European settlement -- such as John Glover's Arcadian scenes. Rather, Schramm tellingly portrays the contemporary interrelationship between white and black. A group of settlers has arrived on horseback. Several of the Aboriginal people wear European clothing and smoke tobacco; one woman is looking at a mirror; and their numerous dogs are a wide variety of introduced mixed breeds. These people appear peaceful, even contented, but their existence is totally circumscribed and Schramm shows clearly that their indigenous way of life has gone for ever. Schramm's work is now almost all held in public collections and is not only rare but often fragile -- perhaps due to his poverty whilst in South Australia. One painting in the Art Gallery of South Australia, now entitled A scene in South Australia, shows a cheerful encounter between settlers at a thatched cottage and the original inhabitants of the district. Other recorded titles suggest an element of narrative: for example, Bushing It, Civilization versus Nature, and Aborigines with Dogs on the Tramp. His paintings are only extremely rarely seen in the market. (1) Mary Overbury, 'Early Colonial Art and Artists', Adelaide Observer, 12 November 1898, is quoted by Ron Appleyard in Joan Kerr (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992,pp. 700-2. We are much indebted to the research of Mr Appleyard, formerly Deputy Director at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
