Published: 8 August 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
JANA VYTRHLIK reflects on her breakthrough in the mystery surrounding the missing portrait of Esther Abrahams and shares another bizarre case from Sydney’s Jewish past.
It has been widely accepted that Jews’ presence in Australia began with about a dozen of petty criminals punished with years of transportation “beyond the seas”. The tale of Esther Abrahams, a young woman from London, sentenced in 1786 and who later became the “first lady” in the early colony, has been told many times.
Much later, in the 1820s, as a respectable Mrs Esther Johnston, she sat for a portrait frequently attributed to one of the colony’s finest artists. Over the past two decades, the painting has become an iconic image of the Jewish past in Australia, yet its whereabouts came to light only recently.
The portrait first appeared in public in 1974, when it illustrated the groundbreaking Jewish history book Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers 1788-1850. A black and white photo of the portrait was then made available by a descendant of the Johnston family. Afterwards, traces of the original painting began to dwindle, with its last public viewing recorded in 1985 when it was listed as Lot 7 for sale at an art auction in Sydney. Presumably purchased by a private collector, the original portrait then disappeared from public sight for many years.
Enter the new century and its fixation with things visual and the image of Esther Abrahams has quickly become the virtual face of Australia's Jewish past. Copied, cropped and flipped to wrong side, re-colourised, and copied again, the image has illustrated novels, articles, blogs and stories. Alas, each time Esther’s features are more and more washed out and fine details lost. Where was the original all this time?
Enter the late Trevor Kennedy (1942-2021), a prominent Australian media and business figure and avid collector of colonial Australiana, whose large collection was donated to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra in 2020.
His collection contains the Johnston family portraits, among them the long-lost portrait of Esther Johnston, née Abrahams, which is illustrated here. While it is unclear whether Kennedy purchased the portrait in 1985 or acquired it later from another collector, the important thing is that after decades in obscurity, the portrait has been rediscovered and is now listed by the museum among its highlights.
