John Kauffman, Melbourne Views, Yarra River, c1910
Summary
South Australian–born photographer John Kauffman (1864–1942) began his professional life articled to architect Harry Grainger (father of renowned composer Percy), before abandoning architecture to study chemistry in London and Zurich. His studies led to his keen interest in the aesthetic possibilities of photographic processes. After a decade in England and Europe, Kauffmann returned to South Australia in 1897 to practise and exhibit his photographic art; his practice was defined by his fidelity to the principles of the pictorialist school and his work was well received, though opinion began to turn against the romanticism of the pictorialists in the 1920s. He moved to Melbourne in 1909, establishing his first photographic studio in Collins Street in 1917.
This silver gelatin print came into the Art and Heritage Collection in 1991, purchased through the auction house Leonard Joel. ‘The Grey Veil’ was made around 1910, shortly after Kauffmann’s arrival in Melbourne, and it demonstrates his signature impressionistic, soft-focus style. The faintness of the broader pictorial space sends the viewer’s eye straight to the elegant city skyline and its reflection in the still waters of the Yarra. While Melbourne might always have been a distinct antipodean capital, this study in softness and tone nevertheless invokes a metropolis that arguably locates it half a world away. ‘The Grey Veil’ was published in the first monograph of Kauffmann’s work, ‘The Art of John Kauffmann’ (1919).
