Ferdinand von Mueller

Note by M appended to a list of names of male subjects in a set of 80 photographic portraits by Charles Walter of Aboriginal people at the Aboriginal settlement at Coranderrk, Vic. A large panel of such photographs was exhibited at the Intercolonial Exhibition of Australia, 1866-7, as item 435 in the Fine Arts Gallery: 'Walters, Mr.[ Error for Charles (Carl) Walter] —Portraits of Aborigines. Presented by Mr. Walters to the Commissioners' (International Exhibition of Australasia (1867), 'Catalogue of exhibits', p. 116), and the photographs are now in the State Library of Victoria; see for example 'Mr King—age 63—Mussy Flundert Chief of the Goulburne [Goulburn] Tribe', http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/261302 . It is known that Walter prepared additional sets and sub-sets of the photographs and that M sent collections of them to Moscow, to the public museum there, and to the Italian naturalist Enrico Giglioli in Florence ( M to the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Moscow, December 1866 (in this ediion as 66-12-00e); Lydon (2002), pp. 121-2; Lydon (2005), pp. 94-5; Giglioli (1875), p. 774). Prima facie, therefore, it seems likely that M would also have sent a set to England. He had been elected a 'local secretary abroad' of the Anthropological Society of London in 1864 (see Anthropological Society of London to M, 15 March 1864) and it would be entirely consistent with his practice in relation to other societies to which he was elected for him to contribute something to that Society when an opportunity arose.

The provenance of the set of Walter's photographs now at the Pitt Rivers Museum, that includes M's note, is unclear. It was previously in the possession of Arthur Thomson (1858-1935), Professor of Human Anatomy at Oxford, 1893-1934, and is part of a larger album containing 'assorted prints, drawings and photographs, including much Australian material' that is reported to have been shown at the Anthropological Society of London in 1867 (E. Edwards (1988), p. 34). While the Society's Journal does not record a set of photographs meeting this description being formally exhibited at any meeting of the Society that year, the minutes of the meeting of the Society's Council held on 2 April 1867 record that 'A special vote of thanks was given to Dr Müller for his present of photographs', and attention may well have been drawn to the donation at a subsequent meeting of the Society; and although the Society had two other members named Müller — Professor August Müller of Königsberg and Professor Max Müller of Oxford — the reference to 'Dr Müller' rather than 'Professor Müller' suggests that the donation had come from M. The date of the minute is also consistent with that of M's note — that is, with the photographs in question being a set of Walter's photographs sent by M from Melbourne at the end of November 1866 — since packages normally at that period took something over three months on the journey.

At the Anthropological Society's meeting on 19 February 1867, the Vice-President, Sir Charles Nicholson, whom M had met in Sydney in 1857, before Nicholson returned to England, and with whom he continued to correspond, presented a 'Collection of Australian Photographs' that might have been the set of Walter's images (Journal, vol. 5, p. cxii). However, it is most unlikely that a package sent from Melbourne at the end of November could have reached London by then; moreover, if the photographs presented by Nicholson had been sent by M, why was this not stated at the time, and why was Council's acknowledgment (assuming it was M to which this referred) delayed until its April meeting?

If a collection of Walter's photographs indeed reached the Anthropological Society of London in the way suggested, it is not now held by the successor institution, the Royal Anthropological Institute. How Arthur Thomson acquired the Australian material now in the Pitt Rivers Museum has not been established, leaving some uncertainty over whether this can be identified with what M may earlier have sent to the Anthropological Society.