John Paine (1833-1908)

The Macleay Museum has several hundred albumen photographic prints taken by John Paine c1880 - 1900. The subject areas covered by this material includes; Sydney Harbour, City, & Suburbs, Federation, staged portraits of Indigenous Australians from Queensland, hoisting the Union Jack in Papua 1884, Samoa, Tonga the Treasury Islands in the Solomon & the West Caroline Islands, Australian wildlife and hand coloured albumen prints of Sydney and the Blue Mountains.

Background

John Paine was born 1833 Reading Street, Ebony, Kent, England and he worked as a photographer around Tamworth in northern New South Wales c1869-74. In 1874 he married Mary Baker who was born in Glebe, Sydney in 1850. In 1875 he established a photographic Studio at 96 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo Sydney, advertising views of Sydney and the Blue Mountains. In 1884 he or one of his assistants may have travelled with the Government Printing Office photographer A. E. Dyer to Papua record the British annexation of the territory. In the late 1880s he settled in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah and it was there that his wife died on the 30th November 1900 aged 50 at Guinea St. Bexley. John Paine died on the 20th of August 1908 aged 75 at Plumpton, he was buried in the Methodist Cemetery at Rookwood. John Paine exhibited his work at Victorian exhibitions and the Macleay Museum collection includes a Bronze Medal for Photography from the Sydney International Exhibition 1879, Silver Medal from Calcutta International Exhibition 1883 - 1884, Bronze medal from Colonial and Indian Exhibition London 1886, and a Brass Medal from International and Colonial Medal Amsterdam 1883.