Richard John Alexander HALL.

Richard Hall was the son of ‘Professor’ Robert Hall of Hindley Street, one of South Australia’s early photographers. He was born in Adelaide on 28 December 1845, nine years after the state was founded, and within months of the first photographs being taken in the colony.

When only 16 years old Richard Hall had a narrow escape when returning from practice at the rifle butts. The horse drawing his phaeton bolted down Hindley Street, throwing out the occupants, the empty vehicle then capsizing at Morphett Street, and being lightly constructed, it was a total wreck.

In March 1864 the Illustrated Melbourne Post published an engraving of Government House, Adelaide, engraved by Samuel Calvert from a stereoscopic photograph taken by Richard Hall, who by this time appears to have been working at his father’s studio in Hindley Street.

Another of Richard Hall’s photographs, copied by a less competent engraver, appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post for September 1865. with the caption ‘Mons. Vertelli walking across the Mount Lofty Waterfall on a wire’. The engraving was criticised by the Register for being ‘neither truthful nor spirited’, and for giving an incorrect representation of the scene for which there was no excuse, as a photograph of the wire-walking feat had been supplied to the ‘artist’.

At the South Australian Society of Arts annual exhibition in December 1865, when just twenty years old, Richard Hall was awarded two prizes: one for the best set of six photographic views; the other for the best set of six stereoscopic photographs.

Richard Hall’s photographer-father, Professor Robert Hall, died in August 1866, and references to a photographer named Hall after that date would almost certainly belong to Richard Hall. The photographers Hall & Edwards, Rundle Street, are listed in the directories for 1866 and 1867, and in January 1867 Thomas Jackson (q.v.) engaged ‘Mr Hall, the well-known photographer’, to take portraits for him. And towards the end of 1867 Hall & Freeman (q.v.) were taking portraits at Eden Valley and Tanunda.

When the process of photo-lithography was attracting attention in 1867, the Register reported that Richard Hall had photographically reduced a copy of Joseph Elliott’s ‘Bygone Days’, the negative of which had then been photo-lithographed by Penman and Galbraith. Although each page of the reduced copy was less than 3 x 2 inches in size, ‘every line and point, both of the words and music, is there, in almost microscopic minuteness...’

An unusual event was reported by the Port Lincoln correspondent of the Register in July 1868. A seal had come ashore ‘for the purpose of accouchement’, and after she had given birth ‘an excellent photograph of the seal and her young was taken by Mr Hall, photographer, late of Hindley Street, Adelaide.’ The seal attracted a large crowd, was tied by rope at one stage, and handled by sightseers, eventually abandoning her offspring which later died.

A photographer making carte de visite portraits at Hookina in April 1871, and known only as ‘Mr Hall’ (q.v.), may have been Richard Hall.

The directories list Richard Hall, of Port Lincoln, as photographer for 1871-72; innkeeper for 1873; publican at the Northern Hotel 1874-76; then Pier Hotel 1877-79. Richard Hall died on 29 September 1881, aged 35 years, while landlord of the Southern Cross Hotel, Adelaide.

It was about 1879, and posssibly near the time of his departure for Adelaide, that Richard Hall made a panoramic photograph of Port Lincoln, four whole-plate prints assembled to make a 30 x 5 inch view of the township and its harbour, a steamship at the jetty and Boston Island in the distance. A game of cricket is in progress on the open ground in front of the Northern Hotel. The right-hand half of the panorama is shown below and, if you wish, you can see an enlargement of this section (140 Kbytes) which is three times the full width of the screen.

If you do choose to see the enlarged picture on your screen, you can return here by using the BACK arrow of your browser. Remember to use your bottom scroll bar and arrows to move left and right to see the parts of the picture that are off the screen. And when you do have the panorama on your screen you can click on the horse and cart in front of the Northern Hotel for a close-up view of the cricket match.

To view the enlargement,  CLICK HERE.

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