Myrtleford.

Biography:

George Alphonse Collingridge de Tourcey (1847-1931)

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 the Australian coastline.