The Yarra. December 17th, 1863.

A$1,250 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Albumen print photograph, in large format 190 x 240 mm; laid down on its original mount of thin card, with a fully contemporary caption in pencil to the lower margin: The Yarra. December 17th, 1863 ; no photographer s imprint; the print has some minor scattered foxing and what appears to be a crude attempt at retouching in the bottom right corner.; the mount has been removed from a frame at some point. An apparently unrecorded image of the great Melbourne flood of December, 1863. The view looks east along the swollen Yarra, most likely from a vantage point on the sloping ground overlooking the river in the vicinity of Richmond. Only a small number of other photographs documenting this catastrophic weather event have survived. Several were taken by one of Melbourne s leading professional photographers of the day, George William Perry. Perry s views of his inundated city include, for example, Corner of Flinders and Spencer Sts; under flood , held in the State Library of Victoria (PCLTA 359), and Princes Bridge and the Yarra in flood, December 1863 , held in the University of Melbourne Art Collection. A carte de visite of the Yarra in flood near Dight s Mill was also published by Davies Co. The fact that the present photograph was clearly taken in a location on the banks of the Yarra a considerable distance east of Princes Bridge one of the central locations from where Perry documented the event would suggest that it was not taken by Perry. This is corroborated by the very large

• Binding: Hardcover

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