JOHN BERTRAM EATON
1881 - 1966
John Bertram Eaton, also known as JBE, migrated from England to Melbourne with his family in 1889. He and other members of his family were picture framers in Toorak and South Yarra until the 1930s. Frame making was Eaton's primary occupation but he was also a serious amateur photographer and a member of many national and international pictorial camera clubs. In 1921 Eaton joined the Pictorial Workers Society in Melbourne, in 1926 he was elected a member of the Australian Salon of Photography and in 1929 he was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. Eaton's work is held in major cultural institutions around Australia and internationally, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Royal Photographic Society Collection and Archives, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, U.K. Australian institutions include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Camera Club, and the Ian Potter Gallery at Melbourne University.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Photographic print mounted on cardboard: black and white; 30.2cm x 18.8cm., mount 33.2cm x 21cm.
NOTES
Undated, date assigned by cataloger from entry regarding image in The Australasian Photo-Review, October 15, 1920.
Photographer's name inscribed in pencil beneath image lower right (not in photographer's hand) and noted in The Australasian Photo-Review, October 15, 1920.
The following is from the ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, web site.
John Bertram Eaton was born in England and migrated to Australia with his family eight years later. His father ran a small gallery and framing shop in Melbourne, where Eaton began work. In the early 1920s his photographs were included in local and international exhibitions and in 1921 he joined the Victorian Pictorial Workers Society. Four years later he held a solo exhibition of 124 photographs, nearly all of them landscapes. At this time Cazneaux called him "a fairly new man amongst the Pictorialists of today". He became a foundation member of the Melbourne Camera Club and remained a prolific exhibitor into the late 1940s.
Jack Cato called Eaton "the Poet of the Australian landscape". Among his contemporaries he was considered one of the most gifted interpreters of the landscape. When this photograph was exhibited at the Victorian Salon in 1936, the reviewer claimed that it already was a "picture too well known to need description". Eaton’s reputation as an interpreter of the Australian landscape extended overseas, with one English reviewer noting, "when it comes to Australian landscape, we in England regard John B. Eaton as its interpreter". Like the painter Elioth Gruner, Eaton frequently depicts wide, expansive landscapes, denuded of trees, with low receding hills in the distance. He was very skilled at rendering atmosphere and it was probably his aerial, rather than linear, perspective – that sense of distance given by atmosphere which seems to veil and lighten certain parts of the landscape – which appealed so strongly to his admirers here and overseas.
LANDSCAPE
circa 1930
IN STATELY SPLENDOUR
circa 1929
UNTITLED (VASE)
circa 1930s
MARKET GARDEN
circa 1930s
15th January 1920 Page 16 - Vol. 27 No. 1 The Australasian Photographic Review
A COUNTRY COTTAGE
By John B. Eaton
Highly Commended in the A.P-R. Competition for September