Holiday Spots in Australia-Where we go Christmasing.

Arthur Collingridge de Tourcey (1853 - 1907)

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 was one of several sons in an old Catholic family from Godington Manor, Oxfordshire. Like his brother George , he mostly dropped the 'de Tourcey’ in Australia. came to Sydney in 1879 where he worked as an illustrator for the Sydney Mail , the Town and Country Journal. He founded the New South Wales Art Society and was staff artist of the Illustrated Sydney News. Collingridge exhibited widely, mainly in New South Wales and was a founding member of the Royal Art Society of NSW 1880.

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Georgius - George Alphonse Collingridge de Tourcey (1847 - 1931)

Collingridge was an artist and historian. He rarely used 'de Tourcey'. His parents moved to France in 1853 and he was educated at the Jesuit College, Vaugirard, and the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, studying architecture under Viollet-le-Duc, wood-engraving and painting. Corot informally accepted him as a pupil, a very rare favour. In 1867, when Garibaldi invaded the Roman States, Collingridge joined the Papal Zouaves and took part in seventeen engagements, receiving no wounds but three medals, including the Mentana Cross. In 1869-70 he was back in Paris, returning to England after Sedan before settling again in Paris in 1872. Although he continued to paint throughout his career—he held his last exhibition in 1926—he now found his real métier in wood-engraving, then the staple form of graphics in such famous journals as the Illustrated London News and L'Illustration, for both of which he worked. On the advice of his brother Arthur (1853-1907), also an artist, who was already in Australia, Collingridge migrated in 1879 to join the Illustrated Sydney News, he also worked for the Australian Town and Country Journal and the Sydney Mail. Dissatisfaction with lay control of the existing New South Wales Academy of Art led the brothers to found the (Royal) Art Society of New South Wales in July 1880, and in 1888 they launched the short-lived Australian Art, the first such journal in the continent. Both brothers taught in schools and technical colleges. Between 1890 and 1925 Collingridge devoted two books and some thirty articles to establishing Portuguese priority to the charting of teh Australian coastline.

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Julian Rossi Ashton (1851 - 1942)

Ashton was born in England, the elder son of a wealthy American, Thomas Briggs Ashton and his wife Henrietta, daughter of Count Carlo Rossi, a Sardinian diplomat. Soon after his birth the family moved to Cornwall, where his father, an amateur painter, encouraged the artistic leanings of Julian and his brother George. About 1862 the Ashtons moved to Totnes on the River Dart, where Julian attended the local grammar school, but his father died and the family, now in financial straits, went to London. Julian had art lessons from an old friend of his father whose teaching he described as 'the most helpful I ever had'. At 15 he took a job in the civil engineering branch of the Great Eastern Railway and attended the West London School of Art at night. After three years he joined a firm of ironmongers as a draftsman, but soon left to become a successful illustrator for such journals as Chatterbox and Cassell's Magazine. In 1873 he spent a few months at the new Académie Julian in Paris, and subsequently had work accepted by the Royal Academy of Arts. Ashton emigrated to Melbourne in 1878 to work as an artist for the Illustrated Australian News. In 1881 he worked at the Australasian Sketcher and in 1883 moved to Sydney to work on the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and the Bulletin. Ashton became an influential patron and supporter of Australian through his roles as trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales and numerous associations that he belonged to. He was awarded the Society of Artists' medal for distinguished services to Australian art in 1924, appointed C.B.E. in 1930, and won the Sydney sesquicentennial prize for a water-colour in 1938.

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