Henry Walter BARNETT

(Melbourne, 1862-Nice, 1934)

barnett henry 1894 portrait

Jean-Claude SEGUIN

1

Lewis Barnett (Londres, [1821]-Melbourne, 23/11/1906) épouse Alice Jacobs (Londres, 03/08/1910). Descendance :

  • Bernard Barnett (Adelaide, 1852-Sydney, 1934)
  • Samuel Barnett (Australie du Sud, 1854-Adelaide, 1915) épouse Sarah Russell.
  • John Philip Barnett (1860-1877)
  • Henry, Walter Barnett (Melbourne, 25/01/1862-Nice, 16/01/1934) épouse (Sydney, 18/07/1889) Hilda "Ella", Frances Clement Forbès ([1869]).
  • Charles Lewis Barnett (St Kilda, 1863-).
  • Phoebe Barnett (Yarra, 1867-Sydney, 1955).

2

Les origines (1862-1895)

Fils d'un coloriste, Henry, Walter Barnett quitte l'école à l'âge de 13 ans et va commencer sa carrière photographique comme assistant de studio de Robert Stewart (Bourke Street) vers 1875 où il fait la connaissance du futur peintre Tom Roberts. On doit à l'historien Jack Cato des informations, qu'il faut considérer avec prudence, sur les débuts professionnels d'Henry, Walter Barnett :

In 1875, when he was 13 years old he was apprentices to Stewart's of Bourke Street, Melbourne, as a studio assistant. He was never in their workrooms. It was his sole duty to assist the operator until such time as he could himself operate. Five years later when he felt he could make a start on his own, he found a partner named Reece [sicwho knew all the technical side of the craft, and they borrowed finance to open a studio in Macquarie Street, Hobart.
There, in a small city, Walter spent a couple of years acquiring facility and confidence in his operating, then he sold out to Reece.


CATO, 1955: 90.

En [1882], il ouvre, à Hobart, un studio avec Harold Rise avec lequel il crée la marque "Rise and Barnett". Le partenariat prend fin le 31 août 1883.

barnett henry 1884 dissolution
The Mercury, Hobart, mercredi 23 janvier 1884, p. 3.

Henry Walter Barnett quitte l'Australie pour se rendre en Grande-Bretagne où il perfectionne son métier auprès des célèbres photographes William et Daniel Downey. Il est de retour à Melbourne en décembre 1886 :

PASSENGERS FROM LONDON.
The following passengers had booked in London up to Oct. 15, to proceed to Australia per R.M.S. Rome, which arrived last Monday: For Melbourne: [...] Mr. H. W. Barnett.


The Inquirer and Commercial News, Perth, mercredi 1er décembre 1886, p. 4.

 En 1887, Henry Walter Barnett ouvre, à Sydney l'établissement photographique "Falk's" :

My brother, you know, Walter Barnett, founded Falk's in Sydney, and then created the title now so widely known. That was in 1886, and in 1892 he opened the Melbourne branch. He and Jefferson Jackson, a fine fellow, now in Sydney, brilliant architect to his finger-tips, designed the studio as you see it. The scheme cost between three and four thousand to complete. Meanwhile, I was printer for the firm, and, by Jove, how I did have to work! Under Walter it was no joke. He was so exacting, so artistically conscientious, a master in this art, for photography to him is an art, as it is also to me.


Critic, Adelaide, samedi 16 décembre 1899, p. 45.

En juillet 1890, il dépose le nom de marque "Vitagraph" :

[5719] Registrar General's Office,
Sydney, 17th July, 1890.
TRADE-MARK
IT is hereby notified that Henry Walter Barnett (trading as Falk & Co.), of 496, George-street, in the City of Sydney, Colony of New South Wales, has, in pursuance of the 4th section of the Trade-marks Act 28 Vic. Nº. 9, applied to register a Trade-mark of the following description, viz.:-The word "Vitagraph,"-copies of which may be seen at this Office, and which Trade-mark is intended by the said Henry Walter Barnett (trading as Falk & Co.) to be applied to photographs.
Notice is hereby given that unless it be shown to my satisfaction, before the expiration of fourteen days from the publication, hereof, that such Trade-mark has been previously registered, or that some other person is entitled to such Trade-mark, or that such Trade-mark is so like some other Trade-mark that it may be mistaken for the same, a certificate will, in pursuance of the provisions of the said Ait, be issued to Henry Walter Barnett (trading as Falk & Co.), certifying that he is entitled to the use of the same.
CHARLES PINHEY,
Registrar General.


New South Wales Government Gazette, Sydney, vendredi 18 juillet 1890, p. 5538.

 À l'occasion de sa tournée australienne, l'actrice française Sarah Bernhardt se fait photographier par "Falk":

The following brief letter has been received by Falk, the Australian photographic artist, from Mme. Sarah Bernhardt: "I thank you a thousand and thousand times for the adorable and artistic photographs which you have made of me; they are the prettiest, and most faithful. I take both your hands and tell you once more thanks and au revoir."


Evening News, Sydney, vendredi 14 août 1891, p. 6.

barnett henry 1891 falk sarah bernhardt
Falk Studio, Sarah Bernhardt, Sydney, 1891.
Source: National Portrait Gallery

C'est à la même époque qu'Henry Walter Barnett part pour les États-Unis à bord du Monowai (août 1891) avec l'intention de se renseigner sur le projet d'Exposition à Chicago :

Mr. Henry Walter Barnett, better known as "Falk," the photographer, Royal Arcade, George-street, is the gentleman referred to. Mr. Barnett is a sound man of business, is admittedly at the head of his profession in this country, and has made four business trips to America and Europe almost within as many years. Having these facts in view, a representative of the EVENING NEWS waited upon Mr. Barnett on Saturday, and obtained the following interesting account of Chicago and its proposed faire, and the fallacy of extending Australian representation to either: He said he left Sydney by the Union Company's steamship Monowai sometime in August, 1891, for San Francisco...


Evening News, Sydney, samedi 26 mars 1892, p. 2.

De retour, il va inaugurer, en mars 1895, une succursale à Melbourne qui semble avoir été dirigée par son frère Charles et sa soeur Phoebe :

THE FALK STUDIO.
BY RITA.

A branch of the famous Sydney photograph studio, conducted by Falk , was opened on Saturday with some eclat. The premises are in Elizabeth street. They have been most artistically fitted up and arranged for the conduct of a high-class photographer's business. The decorations and furnishings are what one might expect in a Falk studio. Everything in connection with the work is up to date, and the perfect results obtained are testified to by the picture portraits shown on the Block and in the waiting-room in Elizabeth street. The firm has the monopoly of production in Australia with the portrait of Mrs Brown Potter, Miss Olga Nethersole, Mesdames Sarah Bernhardt, and Bernard-Beere. Falk's work is well known in Melbourne already from the frequency with which their name is seen on the photographs of celebrities. The dressing-room for theatricals is near the studio, an admirably lighted and furnished apartment. A hairdresser arranges the coiffeurs of sitters, and each patron has a prettily arranged dressingroom to herself, with a maid in attendance. There has already been a large attendance of the public, and the Falk Studio bids fair to become as popular here as in Sydney.
The Herald, Melbourne, mardi 19 mars 1895, p. 3.

La renommée d'Henry Walter Barnett est alors importante, et il est souvent réclamé par des figures célèbres de l'époque qui souhaitent se faire photographier :

Mr. H. W. Barnett, better known as Falk, the Melb. and Sydney photographer, whose excellent work has frequently adorned these pages, has the exclusive right of "taking" Mrs. Potter and Kyrie Bellew during their Australian tour, as he had on the occasion of their last visit. In fact, these players, who are reckoned the best of subjects for posing purposes that have visited Australia, refuse to sit to any other camera men. Mr. Barnett photographed Mrs. Potter first 12 years ago, when he was with the famous firm of W. and D. Downey, the Queen's photographers, of London, and his pictures of the beauteous lady have appeared in nearly every paper in the world.


Free Lance, Melbourne, jeudi 25 juin 1896, p. 5.

Le cinématographe (1896)

Si les conditions de leur rencontre ne nous sont pas connues, Henry Walter Barnett va être en contact avec Marius Sestier après l'arrivée en Australie de ce dernier, en septembre 1896. L'historien Jack Cato donne sa version sur cette rencontre, mais ces informations ne sont pas confirmées :

In January, 1896, Walter Barnett left Falk's Studio, Sydney, for a holiday in London, returning later to Australia in a liner that called at Bombay. There in the Taj Mahal Hotel, Barnette met Sestier who was very disappointed with the reports on his work from Paris.
Walter Barnett offered to finance and bring Sestier to Australia in the same ship, under some loose partnership arrangement which must have been agreaable to the Lumieres, for they continued to supply their film. Thirteen years later when I was working in London with Walter Barnett, he several times told de: "I was the first to bring a movie camera to Australia."


CATO, 1955: 116.

Il semble pourtant que Walter Bernett n'ait pas quitté l'Australie au cours de l'année 1896. Ce qui est vrai c'est que, dès le 1er octobre, les deux hommes apparaissent comme les directeurs du Salon Lumière de Sydney. où est présenté le cinématographe :

Mons M. Sesher [sic], who has brought the machine to Australia, has been accredited directly from the patentees, Messrs Lnmiere, of Lyons, France and gives an identical series of views with those now drawing all London to the Empire Theatre. Mons M Sesher is to be congratulated not only on the business he is doing, but also on having been able to arrange to do his business through such gentlemen as Mr Wettmacott and Mr Barnett. It is hardly possible to describe the wonderful beauties of the Cinematographe.


Truth, Sydney, dimanche 4 octobre 1896, p. 2.

Selon, les annonces, il existe un incertitude sur la fonction respetive de chacun. Dans une nouvelle annonce en date du 2 octobre, si Marius Sestier apparaît bien comme directeur, Westmacott et Barnett figurent comme "gestionnaire" ("unde the management"). La confusion ne s'arrête pas là puisque le lendemain on peut lire dans la presse :

Photographer Falk is the possessor a a Cinematograph.


Free Lance, Melbourne, samedi 3 octobre 1896, p. 5.

Dans ce même journal, quelques lignes plus loin, il est à nouveau question du cinématographe :

The Cinematographe which Harry Rickards has been showing, is not the most perfect of its kind. A French scientist, Lumiere, has brought the idea to a wonderful state of ingenuity. J. C. Williamson and Walter Barnett, proprietor of the Falk studios, have secured the Australian rights of this, and will before long startle the public of this land with the Frenchman's invention.


Free Lance, Melbourne, samedi 3 octobre 1896, p .5.

Charles B. Westmacott, dans les souvenirs qu'il a laissés, évoque, de façon assez approximative, cette collaboration :

ONE of my early ventures into the lists of management had to do with the first display of moving pictures in Australia. The original machine - a Lumiere, was sent to this country by Pathe Freres [sic] in '95 [sic]. There were twelve pictures, each running to about 100 feet. J. C. Williamson had secured the outfit with a view to showing it in his forth coming Melbourne panto, "Matsa." The opening, however, was six weeks away, and J.C.W., always anxious to turn an honest penny, invited myself and Barnett, founder of Falk studios, to come in with him a preliminary Sydney season. The "big Boss" hadn't a vacant place of his own to show in, d'yo hen. Barnett and I rented a shop somewhere about where the Film House now stands. We put in Austrian chairs and engaged a small band with music specially arranged by Hazon, leading conductor of the day. We projected from what was really the shop window, and the admission charge was a bob.Williamson as machine holder took half the profits, and at the end of a hectic flickering month Barnett and I emerged with £100 apiece for our chop. The show ran at half hour intervals from midday until six o'clock.


WESTMACOTT, 1929 (06/04): 17.

Les séances vont ainsi se prolonger jusqu'au 27 octobre 1896 date qui marque la fin des projections à Sydney. Peu après Henry Walter Barnett fait passe une annonce dans la presse où il signale qu'il n'a plus d'activités cinématographiques dans la ville.

barnett henry 1896 annonce
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, samedi 31 octobre 1896, p. 2.

Dans une autre annonce, il signale qu'il est parti avec Marius Sestier à Melbourne.

THE LUMIERE CINEMATOGRAPHE.
Mr. H. W. Barnett, of Falk's, notifies in another column that he is in no way connected with any cinematographe at present being exhibited in Sydney. Messrs. Sestier and Barnett are at present managing the only Lumière machine in Melbourne.


The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, samedi 31 octobre 1896, p. 12.

Et après... (1897-1934)

H. Walter Barnett quitte Adelaide, le 1er février 1897 à bord de Polynésien à destination de Marseille.

 

Mr. H. Walter Barnett, who introduced the famous Lumiere Cinematographe in Sydney, announces in another colum that he is now able to supply complete apparata for producing the animated pictures by the Lumiere method. Information will be given at Falk's Melbourne Studio only.The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, samedi 8 mai 1897, p. 10.

 

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barnett-henry-walter-5139

https://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=2899

AN AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHER
LONDON, October 1.
Mr Walter Barnett has obtained the premiership medal of the British Royal Photographic Society for head studies of the late Sir Henry Parkes and of Mr. Henri Kowalski, the eminent musician.The Golden Age, Coolgarie, samedi 2 octobre 1897, p. 3.

H.W. Barnett (Falk, of Melbourne) has been ill with rheumatism. His many friends will be glad to know he is better and goes to the south of France shortly for the winter.Melbourne Punch, Melbourne, jeudi 20 janvier 1898, p. 16.

barnett henry walter 1899 sarah benhardt
Melbourne Punch, Melbourne, 5 janvier 1899, p. 11.

Henry Walter Barnett ouvre un studio à Londres en 1899 où Sarah Bernhardt se fait photographier.

 

IN the last number of The Broadway Magazine Miss Dorothy Usner, who visited you with Nat Goodwin, has an article on how to succeed on the stage, illustrated with the beautiful art photos of herself that Walter Barnett took at the Falk Studios in Melbourne, and which she has had labelled as being 'taken from poses suggested by herself,' and copyrighted by her some years ago. I wonder what Mr Barnett would say ? Miss Usner is a young lady who appreciates to the full the value of self-advertisement, and the public here watches her doings with great interest. Recently, following on Miss Doroty Vane's example, Miss Usner caused a mild sensation by declaring her intention of forsaking the stage and the follow mockeries of life and devoting herself to religous work. But she is still acting.Melbourne Punch, Melbourne, jeudi 28 décembre 1899, p. 11.

When I was a young man I went to London and worked for Barnett, and in my autobiography I Can Take It, I tell of this period, when he was the chief photographer of Royalty, when practically every sitter possessed a title. At this time he photographed six sisters a day and his orders in 1909 averaged £37 each, so he was taking over a thousand pounds a week when golden sovereings were currency.
Walter Barnett was tall and distinguished-looking, with light brown hait and a moustache. There was an air of the army officer about him, and a high sense of dignity. A sense of humour was not his strong point but he was a warm and generous friend to many of our Australian artists in London. Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and James Quinn were his intimate associates. Many old members of his staff loved him, and swear by him. He could also make others hate him; and he was absolutely irresistible to women.
Apart from being one of the greatest operators of the camera who ever lived, he knew nothing about photography at all. He had never developed a negative or handled a pencil or brush for retouching and finishing, and he never made a print in his life. He gathered around himself a group of highly skilled craftsmen, paid them extravagant salaries, and inspired them to make the most of his splendid operating.
His retouchers and finishers were trained in art schools. His printers were the best available, the paper they used being sepia platinotype manufactured especially for Barnett's esclusive use, and giving prints with the quality of old mezzotints. The men who did the mounting of the finished pictures were skilled bookbinders who could set up the prints in the manner of rare manuscripts. These were embossed "Portraits de Luxe"-and they looked it.
Strange to relate Barnett never understood what his staff was doing. He would say to his printer: "What are you doing now, Peters?" "I'm printing up detail in the dress, sir!" "But how do you know what to do-what is there about the negative that tells you to do that?" Barnett would nod at the explanation but he never really understrood it. After all he did not have to know, the technical work was in highly competent hands.
Behind every success story is the mind of a realist and those happy elements of perfect adaptation to one's age and environment. The gods gave them to young Walter at his birth. From the first he saw where he wanted to go, and the course he set was direct. He did all the right things or if he made a mistake he turned it to a profit.
In 1875, when he was 13 years old he was apprentices to Strewart's of Bourke Street, Melbourne, as a studio assistant. He was never in their workrooms. It was his sole duty to assist the operator until such time as he could himself operate. Five years later when he felt he could make a start on his own, he found a partner named Reece who knew all the technical side of the craft, and they borrowed finance to open a studio in Macquarie Street, Hobart.
There, in a small city, Walter spent a couple of years acquiring facility and confidence in his operating, then he sold out to Reece and went to America where he worked first in a studio in San Francisco, then one in Chicago, and still another in New York. After two years in the States he sailed for London to become an operator in W. & D. Downey's fashionable studio in Ebury Street, Belgravia. Here he photographed the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, and Dukes and Duchesses and titles galore.
And then-in 1885-with more varied studio experience than any other man in this country, he returned to Australia, opened the Falk Studio, Sydney, and began and remained at the top.
He married a charming Australian girl and their scale of entertaining was lavish. There is a portrait of Mrs. Barnett by Sir John Longstaff hanging in the Adelaide Art Gallery. While the social entertaining helped to bring him rich clients, the quality of his work placed him outside price competition and this allowed him to bring a revolutionary extravange into portraiture.
Until his day it was the custom for a studio to take one position of a client, on one plate; very few studios used two plates on a subject. But Barnett used a dozen. When he had a special sitter such as Sarah Bernhardt he took fifty. Mr. and Mrs. Barnett met Bernhardt on the ship as she arrived in Sydney and Barnett handed her a cheque for one hundred guineas for the exclusive rights to photograph her in New South Wales. As was expected he quite hypnotised the divine Sarah, and her own burblings about the so-great and charming Monsieur Barnett were worth her fee many times over.
During a slump period he took a window in the heart of Sydney 


Voyage aux États-Unis en 1910.

Recensement en 1911 à Londres.

PHOTOGRAPHER OF KINGS
Mr. H. W. Barnett Home After 30 Years
One of London's leading West End photographers before he retired a few years ago, Mr H. Walter Barnett has come back to Melbourne to have a look over his home town.
Mr Barnett has specially photographed King Edward, King George and the Queen, and a host of celebrities in England, public men like Lords Balfour and Haldane. and distinguished soldiers such as Haig and Rawlinson.
A prominent [artist] has said of Mr Barrett that he is more an artist than a photographer, being the progenitor of character studies through she lens.
Mr. Barnett left Melbourne 30 years ago to follow with greater success in a bigger field the success he had here, and in Sydney. He was associated in Australia with the first production of the cinema, and in 1897 controlled the first set of pictures made of the Melbourne Cup. These were shown for some time in the Empire Theatre in London.
BEAUTY OUT OF DUST
Back now after all those years he admits that a city more beautiful than he ever imagined has grown out of the dust. The old Treasury first comes to his mind— which still might be put into a garden in Florence and would look perfectly in keeping with its Italian surroundings."
The Burke and Wills statue is "one of the best pieces of comparatively modern work in the way of fine bronze that I know." And he wonders why the names of the architects and sculptors are not perpetuated on their creations.
Since the war Mr Barnett has lived mostly in France, with a year or so in Italy, studying and collecting art—the object of his life's work. For years he has been associated with the artists and sculptors of England and the Continent. He has brought buck with him a collection of French works representing the modern feeling in technique and method. These he hopes to exhibit here, probably next month.
Most of them are landscapes and flowers — works of such men as J. F. Blanche, one of France's loading artists, and of tho Abbe Calles, of Grenoble In the province of Dauphine.
"Most people In Australia." said Mr Barnett today, "think that there is only one aspect of French art— what is known as extravagant futurism and post-impressionism. But there are other manifestations by men who have taken up the great Impressionists of the seventies and eighties of last century, and are carrying on the tradition of the better and more sane outlook.
"A great deal of the extravagant work Is being done, not by actual French people, but by Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, and Poles, who live in Paris as students. This sort of work became so extravagant in Berlin that the German Government brought in a Bill providing for a Government censorship.
"I went recently to the opening of the International art exhibition in Venice. The extravagance and absurdity of a great deal of the work outside the English pavilion, brought down the condemnation of the Roman Catholic Archbishop, who had noticed posted in tho churches prohibiting his people attending the exhibition.
"The futurists, the Germans, and the Italians themselves were to blame. They treated religious subjects in a blasphemous kind of way, and I must say I was entirely in sympathy with the Archbishop's action.
SOME GOOD, PERHAPS
"Of course, there may be something of the best in the modern movement — something that ultimately may be beneficial that we must not condemn off hand. Unfortunately, it encourages a lot of men with little or no merit to Imagine that there is a distinction about their very faults".
Mr Barnett thinks that some admirable work is being done by Australian artists — "but they must always be influenced, by outside, by Europe and France in particular, for France, despite all the changes that are taking .place, is still the centre of all the real art movements.
"Australia must, of necessity, depend on. tho work coming in from outside, so that students and picture lovers may see what is evolving. There is no finality in the manifestations of art, it Is a change that is continuous.
"I notice a big Improvement in all the condition of life in Melbourne: the artistic development is most noticeable. Therefore, I cannot understand a Government that puts a tax on art through the tariff."The Herald, Melbourne, mercredi 8 février 1927, p. 4.

barnett walter portrait 02
Walter Henry Barnett, c. 1917.

Sources

CATO Jack, The Story of the Camera in Australia, Melbourne, Georgian House, 1955, 290 p.

DE SERVILLE Paul H., "Henry Walter Barnett (1862-1934)", Australian Dictionary of Biography (https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barnett-henry-walter-5139)

MELL Paul, "The Man Behind the Camera", The Critic, Adelaide, 16 décembre 1899, p. 47.

WESTMACOTT C. B., "His Apologia", Smith's Weekly, Sydney, 1929.

3

4

         

Contacts