Annual Meeting of the N.S.W. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A very early and rare image of the RSPCA in Australia showing a meeting of the NSW branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was formed in 1873. Collingridge was a painter, illustrator and teacher who became staff artist for the Illustrated London News and The Graphic, both very successful London newspapers, before emigrating to Australia. He founded the New South Wales Art Society and was staff artist of the Illustrated Sydney News.

From the original edition of the Illustrated Sydney News. The Illustrated Sydney News, which was published from 1854 to 1889 and included a number of high quality engravings to illustrate the accompanying news and articles. It was issued on a monthly basis due to the time consuming process of having to engrave each illustration which would take one engraver between one and two weeks to make each one. Many famous Australian colonial artists and illustrators were employed in the making of them, such as Julian Ashton, Albert Cooke, Charles Conder, Samuel Calvert, Frank Mahony and Arthur Collingridge. The engravings provided a unique glimpse into colonial life, often depicting situations or scenes that were less than flattering, in contrast to the majority of sanctioned views that provided a sanitized portrayal of life in Australia. Increasingly expensive to produce, the few illustrated newspapers that made use of original engravings for their illustrations, and that survived the economic collapse of the late1880’s found themselves competing against the new technology of photographic produced half-tone and lino type processes the illustrations. By the turn of the century most of the illustrated newspaper had closed. Due to their ephemeral nature few have survived.