F.J.S. Stephen, City Solicitor, W. Lorck, portrait
Summary
Half length portrait of F.J.S. Stephen, City Solicitor
The significance of this painting lies primarily in its historical value as a record of one of the City of Melbourne’s senior officers. However it is also of interest in terms of its production method. Composed of a black and white photograph laid down on canvas then over-painted in oils, this method was a common and cheap form of portraiture in the late 19th Century.
The painting was donated to the Council by J.S. Stephen in 1939, and originally hung in the Refreshment Room on the 2nd floor of the Town Hall. The painting is dated 1893, two years before Stephen retired. It would seem likely that the Council and/or Stephen commissioned the work which was hung in the Town Hall and then the painting was given to Stephen's family at a later date. There was no set practice on the commissioning and ownership of portraits but it is irregular for anyone other than a Lord Mayor to have been the subject of a commission. If this was a commission, it has the Town Clerk Edmund Fitzgibbon’s ‘fingerprints’ all over it as F.J.S. Stephen’s service over several decades was broadly concurrent with his.
After the Town Hall fire in 1925 a number of paintings were housed at the Bouverie Street Store yard owned by the council. It was not until the 1970s that many of these paintings were treated and displayed again in the Town Hall. Some of these paintings however were later discovered at the National Gallery of Victoria's conservation storage area, including this work.
Francis John Sidney Stephen bas born in 1822 in the West Indies of a family well-known in law. Stephen arrived in Australia in 1823, was educated in Sydney and came to Melbourne in c1844, where he was admitted as a solicitor. After some experience on the goldfields he returned to Melbourne and was appointed the first solicitor to the Melbourne City Council. Stephen held the position of City Solicitor until his death in 1895.
No information on the artist and/or photographer has been uncovered through research.
