Design and Art Australia Online

landscape painter and lithographer, was born in the Viennese suburb of Meidling on 2 February 1824. He studied under Thomas Ender and Franz Steinfeld at the Vienna Academy. Winner of nine prizes and already known for his balanced landscapes and precise studies of trees and plants, Selleny was awarded the Rome Prize in 1854 by the Viennese Academy of Creative Arts and spent two years in Italy.

One of the many artistic protégés of Archduke Ferdinand-Joseph Maximilian (an Austrian admiral), Selleny was in March 1857 rated official artist on board the frigate Novara which sailed on a scientific circumnavigation of the globe between April 1857 and August 1859, docking in Sydney from 5 November until 7 December 1858. Like the five scientists aboard, Selleny lived on shore throughout the Sydney visit. During his stay at the Royal Hotel, his health was not the best; he suffered from a distemper possibly brought on by being bitten during a disastrous episode in the Pacific Ocean when, on 18 October 1858, the monkeys on board escaped from their cage and during Sunday Mass ran amok among his equipment. Nevertheless, he made several excursions, twice visiting Wollongong and producing—variously in watercolours, crayons, charcoal and pencil—studies of the bush near Camden Park, Appin and Sir Thomas Mitchell’s Pass. Australian public collections hold two pencil and wash views of Fairy Meadow farm near Wollongong (Dixson Galleries [DG]), two views of Mount Kiera (Wollongong City Art Gallery) and three watercolours of Illawarra Aborigines (DG).

He travelled north to the Hunter River ( Bush on the Hunter , pencil with wash, DG), where he stayed with the ever-hospitable Alexander Walker Scott and his two daughters, Harriet and Helena . Here he assisted with the design for the front cover of, and did several drawings of specimens for, the first part of Walker Scott’s Australian Lepidoptera (London 1864). The cover illustration was much admired, 'the whole picture [reflecting] the greatest credit on the artists for the taste and beauty displayed in the design’. There are two extant pencil drawings of scenes in Sydney, a 'beach promenade’ and a view of Darling Point, as well as a minutely detailed drawing of the interior of a naturalist’s cabin on board the Novara (DG). On a less artistic level, the Novara 's entomologist, G. Frauenfeld, named a new species of gnat in honour of 'the genial artist and his wonderful sketches’.

Known for his lightning speed in delineation, Selleny produced strongly linear, objective drawings which leaned heavily on his practical knowledge of botany and geology. His colours, invariably ochre, green, blue or red, were applied with thrift. When the Novara returned in triumph to Trieste in August 1859, Selleny’s bulging portfolios held over 2000 sketches. Over 30 artists were to work from these to illustrate the 8175 pages of the 18-volume Reise der Novara which appeared in Vienna from 1861 to 1875. The Dixson Galleries’ folder of 13 pencil drawings which had served as models in illustrating the New South Wales portion of K. von Scherzer’s three-volume description of the voyage (1861-62) was purchased in 1957.

Plans in Vienna to produce a chromolithographic album of Selleny’s most striking oils, watercolours and drawings never came to fruition. Selleny spent the last two years of his life in the darkness of a total mental collapse. When he died on 22 May 1875 in a private asylum at Inzersdorf near Vienna his heirs inherited the 946 Novara items still in his possession. A memorial exhibition which showed 540 of these was held in Vienna (Künstlerhaus) from November 1875 until January 1876.

Writers:

Fletcher, John

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011