“Hariet, Goulbourn tribe”

[Caption from inscription on verso of mount]. Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 102 x 62 mm (mount); verso inscribed in ink (probably in the hand of the photographer) ‘Hariet [sic] / Goulbourn [sic] tribe’; a superb print in excellent condition; the mount is clean and stable.

This beautiful portrait of Harriet, a Djadjawurrung woman posed in European clothing, was taken at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station by Fred Kruger around 1876-77. At upper right we can just make out the fringes of the distinctive fern backdrop used by Kruger in his Coranderrk portrait “studio”.

Harriet is also one of the sitters in another Kruger carte de visite portrait taken at Coranderrk, held in the State Library of Victoria (H41139/27). The SLV portrait is slit-mounted in an album, and the handwritten caption on its mount is unquestionably in the same hand as the caption on the back of the carte de visite offered here. It reads: ‘Hariet / Goulbourn & Rose / Ballarat tribe’. We believe that both captions were written by Kruger himself. (Note that both captions even contain the same spelling mistakes in the words Harriet and Goulburn). In the SLV portrait Harriet is pictured wearing a mission blanket, rather than conventional European dress, while her fellow sitter Rose was made to pose in a possum-skin cloak by the photographer.