Framing Virtue:
Public Portraits and Civic Identity in Victorian Adelaide
Abstract
This article examines public portraiture in colonial Adelaide in the 1850s, focusing on the work of artist John Michael Crossland in its exploration of the representation of character and civic virtues in the portraits of three prominent figures—Captain Charles Sturt, Sir Charles Cooper, and Reverend Thomas Quinton Stow—who embodied the emerging middle class and professional elite in early South Australia. The article situates these portraits within the context of a mid-Victorian Carlylean view of history, in which individual agency and moral virtues shaped the collective narrative. The study engages with William Hazlitt's notion of portraiture as a reflection of truth and nature, suggesting that Crossland’s work in Adelaide presents a model for civic representation that blends private and public virtues, individual character and hero identification. In its assessment of the historical context and analysis of the portraits’ formal and iconographic properties, the article demonstrates how Crossland’s art resonated with the social, political, as well as cultural aspirations and values of the colonial middle class. Moreover, the study contributes to a broader understanding of portraiture’s role as both a tool for self-fashioning and a means of state-building in colonial South Australia.
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