painter, was born in Elsinore, Denmark, on 10 April 1827, elder son of the Russian consul François de Habbe. In 1839 he entered the Copenhagen Academy and seven years later was awarded its silver medal. He then studied painting in Italy; one of three surviving watercolour figure studies (private collection), initialled 'N.H.’ and dated 1863, carries an inscription on the back of the frame reading ’57 Memories from old Rome … Nicholas F. Habbe’. In 1851 he received the Neuhausen prize for his oil painting The Reservists of 1848 on the March . With two of his portraits, this now hangs in the National Museum, Denmark. He exhibited genre paintings at the Copenhagen Academy between 1847 and 1870 and had achieved a respectable local reputation before migrating to Victoria with his brother Alexander Habbe in 1855 in search of gold.

Nikolai Habbe painted oil portraits, genre and allegorical subjects in both Melbourne and Sydney. He also joined his brother as a painter on glass and a theatrical scene-painter; in fact, he probably initiated Alexander into the latter profession. Yet although Nikolai worked as a 'fine artist’ all his life, it was Alexander who achieved the greater artistic reputation. Even so, in 1875 the Melbourne Athenaeum called Nikolai’s drawing admirable: 'his conceptions are eminently original and his colouring has been modelled after the style of the old Masters.’ The Sydney Mail critic, on the other hand, was 'unable to say anything complimentary’ about Habbe’s figure paintings, 'but we may mention by way of compensation that his picture of “Britannia Ruling the Waves” with the assistance and consent of Neptune and his company of nereids and tritons, is more highly priced than any other in the exhibition’.

With Dangerous Spot (painted in Denmark, for sale at £100), Britannia Rules the Waves (for sale at £400) was shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1877. Signed and dated 1876 (p.c.), it is a large allegorical oil painting 5 feet x 6 feet 6 inches (1.52 × 1.98 m) featuring Britannia seated beside Neptune in a chariot harnessed to four horses and preceded by three mermen blowing triton shells. Hailing their progress is a group of disporting sea nymphs, some riding dolphins.

Nicholas was undoubtedly the Herr Habbe who painted The Charge of the Six Hundred , shown in an exhibition of war scenes at the Sydney School of Arts in 1872, and America for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition – one of the allegorical murals of the four continents in the pendentives of the Garden Palace dome (incinerated with the building in 1882). Another of his large allegorical oils, depicting New South Wales (1884), was auctioned at Sotheby’s in October 1987 where it was purchased by the Powerhouse Museum. It is reportedly now hanging in Parliament House, Sydney, on loan from the museum.

In 1888 N.F. Habbe showed eight oil paintings at the Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne, giving his address as 109 William Street, Sydney. Their titles indicate his range and are likely to have been painted over several years. They included apparent allegories ( British Culture on Australian Ground , Australian Centennial and his 1884 New South Wales ), narrative genre ( There’s a Sweet Bye-and-Bye and A Christmas Box ), a possible theatre subject ( To Be, or Not To Be , presumably from Hamlet ), a landscape ( A Dusty Day in Sydney Several Years Ago ) and a historical portrait, Captain Cook . The following year A Visit to the Prison, Italy was exhibited with the Art Society of NSW. Yet when he died on 11 November that same year, Habbe’s obituary in the Illustrated Sydney News stated that, though resident in Sydney for many years, he had not actively pursued his profession there. 'Triumvir’ in the Sydney Morning Herald regretted that he had died 'as he had lived here, almost alone and unknown’. It was not until 11 July 1905 that the Daily Telegraph announced the exhibition of a 'unique art collection’ at Tyrrell’s art gallery, 83 Market Street, all the work of N.F. Habbe, who was said to have been resident in NSW for 16 years (Johnson, p.72).

A self-portrait, exhibited posthumously with the Art Society in 1890, was transferred from the Art Gallery of New South Wales to the Mitchell Library in 1920. (There is some speculation that Nicholas Habbe also painted Portrait of a Russian Officer 1857, ie. his brother Alexander, listed as cat.20 by “Unknown artist, 19th Century” in Sotheby’s Fine Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 25-26 August 1997).

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011