Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Bremen, Germany

Biography

painter, scene-painter and decorator, was born in Bremen, Germany, on 6 July 1835. Nothing is known of his parents except that his father was later described as a 'prominent merchant’. At fifteen years of age, Hennings was apprenticed to a decorator in Düsseldorf. For a short time he also attended classes in architectural drawing and perspective at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art but soon abandoned his studies to return to decorative art. As a specialist in painting flower and fruit panels he travelled throughout central Europe, executing some floral garlands for a production at the Vienna State Opera, his first experience as a scene-painter. Hennings migrated to Victoria in 1855, arriving at Melbourne in July or August. He is said to have been encouraged to do so by his brother, apparently already resident in the colony. Hennings first found work in Melbourne as a draughtsman in an architect’s office but soon joined the Queen’s Theatre to paint the scenery for the Christmas pantomime of 1855-56, thus beginning a long and illustrious career as a scene-painter. During the next few years he was engaged at the Cremorne Gardens, the Theatre Royal, the Olympic, Princess and Haymarket theatres (all in Melbourne) and at the Geelong Theatre. He decorated the interior of the Apollo Music Hall, which opened on 5 July 1862. He also painted the auditorium of the adjacent Haymarket Theatre opened on 15 September. Its ceiling consisted of four panels representing the four seasons. In 1866 he was scene-painter for the Lyster Opera Company’s season in Sydney at the Prince of Wales Theatre where he was said to have produced 'scenery unequalled by any we have seen in Australia’. In September 1859 Hennings joined other members of the German community at Hoeckin’s Assembly Rooms in Melbourne to celebrate the anniversary of Humboldt’s birth; Humboldt’s portrait 'cleverly painted in transparency by Mr. Hennings’ hung at one end of the hall. For the 1861 Christmas pantomime Valentine and Orson at the Melbourne Theatre Royal his scenery culminated in a spectacular closing scene 'that presented a news item in an emblematic and heroic way’ (Colligan, 103). News of the tragic end of the Burke and Wills expedition having just reached Melbourne, it had an equestrian statue of Burke set amidst a ferm-tree grove as its centrepiece, with ballet girls at its base carrying shields inscribed with the names of Wills, King and Gray. In front of them was a figure representing Victoria and a ballet girl playing Fame ascending to crown 'the brave leader of the Exploration Expedition, amidst the plaudits of the largest assemblage we have seen inside the walls of the Royal for many months’. An engraving of the scene was published in the Illustrated Australian Mail on 18 January 1862. He showed three paintings at the 1864 Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in Melbourne: Fruit Piece (recalling his earlier decorative work), View in North Germany and Yarra Falls . View on the Yarra, near Melbourne , an oil painting, was shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. In 1870 he became a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts. Hennings was principally known for his association with the Melbourne Theatre Royal where he became co-lessee in 1867. The management’s first profitable production was The Flying Scud; or, a Four-Legged Fortune, which opened on 16 March 1867; its success owed much to Hennings’s 'wonderful scene’ of Epsom Downs on Derby Day . That year he redecorated the auditorium and instituted a picture gallery within the theatre lobby. He worked as scene-painter at the Theatre Royal until it burned down in March 1872 then at the rebuilt Royal from its opening on 6 November 1872. He painted the domed ceiling of the new theatre with views of London from Blackfriars Bridge and of Melbourne from St Kilda Road and was probably also responsible for the portraits of the actors Gustavus Vaughan Brooke and Walter Montgomery on either side of the stage and the copy of Guido Reni’s Aurora above the stalls. Hennings became co-lessee of Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre in 1880, but it burnt down in July. He was therefore back in Melbourne to paint the panorama ('which begins with the Crystal Palace in Hyde-park, and ends with the illumination of the fleet in Hobson’s Bay on the night of October 1 to celebrate the opening of the Melbourne International Exhibition’) and the transformation scene (which showed 'The Apotheosis of Victoria’s Progress in Four Decades, from 1841 to 1881, from Chaos to Splendour’) for the production of Sinbad the Sailor at the Theatre Royal in December 1880. Indeed, for at least twenty years Hennings’s backdrops, panoramas and transformation scenes for this theatre were widely admired and critically acclaimed. It became a Melbourne tradition for the audience to call for Hennings’s appearance on stage during the Christmas pantomime. Marcus Clarke used Hennings as his model for 'Vandyke Brown’, the scene-painter, in his spoof article on pantomime production which appeared in the Weekly Times on 31 January 1874: Now Mr. Vandyke Brown has his grievance. This gentleman, who has to paint some nineteen scenes and contrive the Transformation in addition to a Panorama consisting of the Celebrated Cities of the World ending with Fawkner’s Town and the Local Pump, is apt to get cynical from tobacco and white lead. “I don’t see how to set the Thames on Fire in this last effect”, he says, “without more rosin. And, moreover, seven scenes in the Panorama’s plenty”. “Oh, let’s have a portrait of Bismark”, says Burbo. “Ay! And a couple of views of Metz during the siege, to melt into a pastoral picture of Geelong”, suggests Buzzclack, who is a great man for “ideas”. From 1882 Hennings worked for the triumvirate of J.C. Williamson, Arthur Garner and George Musgrove until forced into retirement through blindness in 1887. Shortly after this he injured his leg in a fall and was reportedly living in straitened circumstances. In January 1889 a testimonial was proposed, and at a meeting on 19 February a benefit performance was planned for 23 March. Offers of support from former colleagues were so numerous that two benefit performances were in fact given on that day: one at the Princess Theatre, the other at the Theatre Royal. Hennings did not attend either performance on medical advice. By June he was reported to be recovering; indeed, he was 'so far improved as to have got once more into harness, having just completed an Italian Lake scene, with wings etc. for the Prahran Town Hall’. In November he returned to the legitimate theatre, painting the scenery for Antony and Cleopatra at the Prince of Wales Opera House. Once more he experienced 'continual applause and frequent calls for the artist. The first scene, revealing Cleopatra’s palace, created an uproar of enthusiasm, and many were moved even to tears as Mr. Hennings appeared for a brief moment in acknowledgment of the compliment, for it was the first time since his illness that he had personally responded to popular applause’. He continued in his profession of scene-painter, one noted production from this period being a cyclorama of early Melbourne (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria) based on an earlier panorama by the architect Samuel Jackson , painted between March and August 1892 for display in the Melbourne Exhibition Building. Hennings died of pneumonia at Melbourne on 3 October 1898, survived by his wife Ellen, née Targett, whom he had married in Melbourne in the late 1850s, and three adult children. He did not name his wife as beneficiary in his will, however; instead, he left £100 to 'Lizzie Collins, known as Mrs Gardiner’ and named as executor his 'reputed daughter, Florence Targett, known as Kitty Hennings’. Hennings’s contribution to Australian scene-painting, indeed to theatre itself, was considerable. As early as 1858 J.E. Neild , who believed 'that the whole effect of a play may be made or marred by its pictorial embellishments’, had singled out Hennings’s work for its 'love of art which I rejoice to see in connexion with dramatic production’. Although retaining this early sophistication throughout his career, Hennings increasingly appealed to popular taste and national self-consciousness by incorporating topical events and familiar local scenes into his work. He seems to have had a namesake, contemporary and compatriot in the artist Johann Friedrich Hennings, given by Thieme-Becker as three years younger and resident in Munich from 1861. Their early careers correspond, however, and the two Hennings were probably one and the same. Hennings might well have sent paintings home from Melbourne to a family connection in Munich for exhibition at the Dresden, Munich and Berlin academies (where Johann Friedrich’s works were exhibited between 1871 and 1898); thus Thieme-Becker, unaware of a long and illustrious antipodean career, assumes continuing German residence. Writers: Callaway, Anita Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 6 July 1835

Summary

Painter, scene-painter and decorator, was born in Germany and arrived in Melbourne in 1855 where he painted theatre scenes for about four decades. Hennings's contribution to Australian scene-painting was considerable.

Gender

Male

Died

3 October 1898

Age at death

63