Charles Abbott b. 1824 England, UK

  • Artist (Photographer)
Amateur photographer, watchmaker and optician, his subjects were mainly views of Hobart and he conducted some early experiments in colour printing. His brother, Alfred, was also a photographer and they went on joint photographic excursions.
Talk | Version history | Updated Oct. 19, 2011 | Created Jan. 1, 1992
Name
Charles Abbott
Birth date
1824
Birth place
England, UK
Death date
1888
Death place
None
Gender
Male
Roles
  • Artist (Photographer)
Other Occupation
  • Optician
  • Watchmaker
Arrival
  • 1850 (Arrived Hobart Town (Hobart), Tas.)
Active Period
  • c.1857- c.1859
Cultural Heritage
  • English
Languages
  • English
Is Indigenous
No
Initial Record Data Source
  • The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870

Amateur photographer, watchmaker and optician, was the elder brother of Alfred Abbott . With his mother and brother he came to Hobart Town in 1850 to join his emancipist father in business as a clock-maker. In 1857-59 Charles took landscape photographs and, with Alfred, accompanied John Mathieson Sharp on photographic excursions. He conducted some early experiments in colour printing using the chemicals potassium permanganate and potassium ferrocyanide. Alfred Abbott’s album (Crowther Library) contains several of Charles’s photographs, mainly stereoscopic prints of views and buildings in and near Hobart. A few are colour experiments, such as the blue half-plate Hobart Town from the Back of our Residence in Murray Street (showing the Abbott garden with its workshop and pear tree in the foreground). He abandoned photography in 1859 and sold his camera to Morton Allport . Also a skilled watchmaker and optician, Charles carried on the family business after his father’s death in 1883 until his own death five years later.

Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
Last updated:
sibling of
Alfred Abbott
1838
Artist (Photographer)
associate of
Alfred Abbott
1838
Artist (Photographer)
child of
Francis Abbott
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
child of
née Woolley Mary Abbott
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Morton Allport
1830
Artist (Photographer), Artist (Painter)
associate of
John Mathieson Sharp
1823
Artist (Photographer)
Hobart Town from the Back of our Residence in Murray Street
Date
1858
Collections
Citations:
  • Sprod, D., (1977), Victorian and Edwardian Hobart from Old Photographs, (Place: Sydney, NSW)
  • Newton, Gael, (1988), Shades of Light, (Place: Canberra, ACT)
  • Rimmer, G., (1966), 'Francis Abbott', (Place: Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 3, ed. Pike, D., Shaw, A., , Clark, M. , Nairn, B. , Serle, G. and Ward, R. , Melbourne, Vic.)