Lot 86: KNUD GEELMUYDEN BULL (1811-1889)

Portrait of Dr James Rogers
signed and dated 'K Bull/1850' (lower right)
oil on canvas
27.8 x 24 cm
Portrait of Mrs James Rogers (née Mary Scarr)
signed and dated 'K Bull 1850' (lower right)
oil on canvas
27.7 x 24.3 cm
2

Dr and Mrs James Rogers thence by descent to the present owner

This pair of signed and dated portraits, painted by the Norwegian-born artist Knud Geelmuyden Bull have an impeccable provenance, passing by descent through the family of the sitters to the current private owner.

The son of a physician Samuel Rogers, James C. Rogers, medical doctor and chemist, was born in London and died in Melbourne early in October 1893, aged 87. For 30 years, Rogers has resided in Tamania before moving to the colony of Victoria where he died 19 years later. His death notice in the Hobart Mercury states that he was formerly of Bagdad, Tasmania, placing his arrival in Van Diemen's Land in circa 1844. A London church record stipulates that Rogers married Mary Ann Scarr on 17 July 1830.

Knud Bull, son of a pharmacist, arrived at Norfolk Island on board the John Calvin in September 1846, sentenced in London to 14 year's transportation for having forged part of a foreign bank note. In 1847 after nine months on Norfolk Island he was transferred to the Saltwater River Convict Probation Station in Van Dieman's Land. Issued with a probation pass in March 1849, Bull was entitled to seek gainful private employment but he instead capitalised upon his artistic abilities acquired from art training in Copenhagen and later under the tutelage of John Christian Dahl, Professor in the Art Academy of Dresden, Germany.

The lives of Dr Rogers, Mrs Rogers and Bull intersected for a brief time in 1850 when Bull taught at the seminary of Mrs Rogers in Bagdad, the same year in which these portraits are dated. Yearning for a life spent beyond private service, Bull absconded to Melbourne in December 1850. He was captured and sent back to Van Diemen's Land where he spent time in solitary confinement before being put into the service of a fellow artist, the Rev. James Gould Medland.

Alfred Bock claimed that Medland taught the colonial portrait artist Robert Hawker Dowling to paint in oils. Medland's contact with Bull and Dowling may account for the difficulty that some have to untangle the authorship of extant unsigned cabinet-sized portraits that were painted by either Bull or Dowling. Cabinet-sized portraits (which in colonial days were those measuring approximately 10 x 8 inches) describes the size of this pair by Bull. Such portraits were portable and suited the room size of a typical middle-class dwelling in colonial Tasmania. Authentic signatures on these works, however, leave no doubt that Knud Bull is their author.

The late doyen of Tasmanian history, Geoffrey Stilwell, told me that numerous portraits that should be attributed to Dowling have been given to Bull and vice versa. It is believed that the only signed Knud Bull portrait is in an Australian public collection and predates this pair by two years. It is the Portrait of Mrs Ambrose Boyd acquired by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1998.

Encased in Robin Vaughan Hood frames, these portraits of Dr and Mrs Rogers epitomise the urge of some members of the colonial middle classes to have their likenesses preserved. Such portraits would serve for future generations as the source for a specific familial pedigree. Rogers is not portrayed in his civic role as a doctor, for any accessory that may have announced his public occupation is not visible. The companion portrait of his wife can be considered equally domestic, showing the subject wearing a wedding ring. Both portraits, however, convey an air of quiet, middle class respectability and moral propriety. Dr Rogers married twice, the second at the age of sixty-two, but had no children. These portraits became treasured possessions of his offspring. With his first wife he had two sons and a daughter. In a time that placed value on primogenitor, the portraits passed first to the eldest son of the couple, Richard John Rogers, who was for 14 years the Commercial Manager of the Hobart newspaper The Mercury and thence by descent.

We are grateful to Dr Paul Paffen from the University of Melbourne for providing this catalogue entry.


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