Amateur photographer, watchmaker and diarist, he was the elder son of Francis Abbott and Mary, née Woolley, of Derby, England. His father arrived at Van Diemen’s Land in 1844, having been sentenced to seven years’ transportation. He set up business as a clock-maker in Hobart Town and in 1850 his wife and family were granted free passage to join him. Alfred Abbott also worked as a watchmaker, produced 'view pictures’ and, with his brother Charles Abbott , accompanied John Mathieson Sharp on photographic excursions. His father loaned a collection of Alfred’s stereoscopic transparencies of Tasmanian scenery (with viewing apparatus) to the 1862 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition.

Alfred Abbott’s important album of early photographs survives in the Crowther Library together with a transcript of his 1858 60 diaries. As well as numerous photographs by the Abbott brothers, many Tasmanian and a few Victorian photographers of the 1850s and 1860s are included: Morton Allport , George Cherry , Samuel Clifford , Edward Haigh , A. McDonald , Francis Russell Nixon , John Mathieson Sharp and Charles Alfred Woolley . Alfred’s own photographs are mainly views of Hobart, its buildings, and nearby scenery such as Grass-Tree Hill and Fern Tree Valley. Most are stereoscopic prints, a few are single half-plates.

Alfred Abbott married Georgiana Sophia Jane, daughter of James Fitzgerald, at Holy Trinity Church, Hobart Town, in October 1865. He died at Ashfield, Sydney, on 3 September 1872. His wife died three months later of consumption.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011