Nicholas Chevalier, colonial artist : autograph letter signed, 1879.

Manuscript in ink, recto of single octavo sheet of writing paper (180 x 115 mm), dated July 1st 1879, addressed to Mrs. Kayser, discussing the difficulty in obtaining tickets for the Royal Academy Conversazione; signed at foot ‘Yours very faithfully, N. Chevalier’; fine.

Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902) is considered one of the most important artists active in Australasia during the gold rush period. The son of a Swiss father and Russian mother, he arrived in Victoria from London in early 1855. Working initially as a commercial artist for the Melbourne Punch and later the Illustrated Australian News, he went on to produce an important corpus of landscape paintings of regional Victoria and New Zealand, before returning to England in 1869 as the official artist on board the Duke of Edinburgh’s yacht, Galatea. His painting Buffalo Ranges (1864) was the first Australian work to enter the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.