John Watt Beattie and the Beattie collections

John Watt Beattie was a well known member of Hobart society who owned a successful photographic studio and travelled widely around Tasmania photographing not only scenery in the wilderness but also buildings, and people including Aborigines. His photographs became an important record of his times and are still reproduced in publications and available in museum records and institutions such as the National Library in Canberra. His competence as a photographer was recognised with his appointment as official state photographer, and his photographs were used as the basis for the design of a number of Tasmanian postage stamps. He mixed with the elite being a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania, the Field Naturalist's Club and the Minerva Club and was a founding member of the Tasmanian Tourism Board. Beattie is still considered an important creator of images of Tasmania's past, but he also played a major role in providing significant contributions to the historic items in the possession of both the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. His collections, which came into these two institutions in 1927 and 1933 respectively, involved combinations of disinterest, interest, acclaim and dissatisfaction in the processes involved in their purchase and exhibition.