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painter, studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery School in 1871-79. According to a later (typed) label on the back of her oil painting, Landscape with Cattle, Comodai (1874, p.c.), she was then living and painting at Comodai, a property between Bacchus Marsh and Gisborne, north-west of Melbourne, where she is said to have been visited by her friend and teacher, Louis Buvelot . In 1874 two of 'Miss Livingstone’s [sic]’ sentimental paintings of children and mothers were reproduced in the Australasian Sketcher (see reprint ed. Michael Cannon). In 1873 and 1875 – her only Melbourne directory listings – Miss Livingston [sic] is recorded as a professional painter of 18 Napier Street, Fitzroy, an inner Melbourne suburb. The paintings Mary Livingston exhibited throughout the 1870s were mainly copies of English pictures in the National Gallery of Victoria, all for sale. A portrait of Nellie Melba by Livingston (NLA) appears to have been painted from or over a photograph. Most of her career seems to have been spent producing similarly saleable 'hack’ art. Even her few known original works of rural domestic life and scenery, evidently done at Comodai, are very sentimental works for the market.

IMAGE: Mary H. Livingston, The Bush Home n.d. (c.1875), photolithograph 13 × 18 cm; published by the Art Union of Victoria, Melbourne 1876. National Library of Australia, album 204E ( Heritage section 3, plate 102). This 1875 photographic reproduction of an unlocated oil painting of a happy Australian scene represents a lost original in more than one sense. Throughout the 1870s its talented artist made a living by painting oil copies of European pictures (many in the NGV) instead of producing original works, which were far less saleable in colonial Victoria. Even the catalogue for the exhibition in which she seems to have first shown this painting states that Miss Livingston and Miss Pilkington were 'the best copyists that we have in Victoria’-an intended compliment. As Miss 'Livingstone’ (a common alternate spelling) the artist is first recorded as painting the oil copy after Weber’s First Snow lent to the 1869 Melbourne Public Library exhibition by surveyor Robert Hoddle. Later that year, Livingston herself showed three more copies at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition: The Poultry Vendor after Van Schendel, Rachel after Goodall and The Fern Gatherer after Herdman. In 1873 Miss 'M.R. Livingstone’ of 18 Napier Street, Fitzroy, exhibited five copies of European paintings at the annual exhibition of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales for sale at prices ranging from £100 for Arab Prisoners (after Hodgson) to £15 for Game Seller (after Van Schendal).

In 1874, still as a 'young’ Victorian artist, Mary Livingston sent four copies to Sydney for the NSW Academy of Art exhibition, including Check-Mate after a painting by Webb in the NGV (£30) and La Belle Yseult after Bedford (£10). The last was purchased by the Academy as a prize in its forthcoming Art Union. Her other exhibits included a 'composition’ called Favourites (not for sale), which appears to have been an original work. An original genre painting by Miss 'Livingstone’, Mud-Pies-Mother’s Coming , exhibited at the VAA in 1874 was sent on to the following year’s Sydney Academy exhibition for sale at 15 guineas. It was judged outstanding, awarded a highly commended certificate and reproduced in the Australasian Sketcher 5 September 1874, p. 85 (a little girl and a toddler). Another original, The Farm Yard (£21), followed in 1876, but it received no prize and evidently did not sell. She reverted to copies in 1877: The Intruders after Ansdell (for sale at £50) and The Seller of Doves (£35) after Goodall. Copies were purchased by wealthy colonials to decorate their English or European style homes and Mary Livingston needed to make a living from her art.

In 1875 she exhibited an oil landscape and two figure studies in the preparatory Melbourne show from which works were to be selected for the 1876 Philadelphia Centenary Exhibition. Because they were being sent overseas, all the chosen paintings had to be original works, preferably with 'identifiably Australian’ subjects. The oil painting from which this print was taken was probably one of them. For once, it had local as well as international appeal. In 1875-76 a photographic reproduction was offered to subscribers to the Art Union of Victoria run by the Victorian Academy of Arts (to which Miss Livingston had just been elected a member) as a superior form of lottery ticket. Every subscriber received a small paper photo from a selection of five or six, all by members of the Academy, and a lucky few also won the originals. The firm of Johnstone & O’Shannessy, a major photographic studio founded by H.J. Johnstone and Miss E.F.K. O’Shannessy , mother of Muriel Binney , usually took the photographs, which were commonly kept as mementos, like this subscription print glued into an album (NLA) compiled by an unknown person.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011