Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

London, England, United Kingdom

Biography

sketcher, colonial administrator and travel writer, was born in London on 30 March 1801, son of Christian Ignatius La Trobe, a second generation Moravian minister of Huguenot origin, and Hannah, née Sims, from Yorkshire. He appears to have been educated in Switzerland. After teaching at a Manchester boys’ school conducted by the Moravians at Droylesden, he went to Neuchétel at the end of 1824 as tutor to the family of the Count de Pourtalés, also of Huguenot stock. La Trobe, an enthusiastic mountaineer and a pioneer member of the Alpine Club, published The Alpenstock; or, Sketches of Swiss Scenery & Manners (1829) and The Pedestrian: A Summer Ramble in the Tyrol (1832) based on his Swiss excursions. Between 1832 and 1834 he travelled in the United States and Mexico, accompanied on a journey across the prairie lands by the writer Washington Irving who published an account of their expedition which referred to his companion as 'a man of a thousand occupations’, including that of 'sketcher of no mean pretensions’. La Trobe in turn published his own account, A Rambler in North America 1832-33 . A gifted sketcher, he always recorded his travels; the illustrations in at least two of his four published travel books were based on his sketchbooks. On 16 September 1835 La Trobe married Sophie de Montmollin, an aristocratic Swiss woman whom he had met when staying with her parents at their country home set on a hill called Jolimont near Lake Neuchétel. Two years later, possibly due to family influence, he was commissioned by the British government to visit the West Indies and prepare three official reports on the education of that country’s recently emancipated Negro slaves. This experience appears to have been the sole qualification for his appointment, in 1839, as superintendent of the fledgling Port Phillip (Victoria) settlement. He, Sophie and their daughter Agnes Louisa left Gravesend in the barque Fergusson on 26 March 1839 and reached Sydney on 24 July. Despite his lack of suitable training or administrative experience, La Trobe spent fifteen years overseeing the development of the Port Phillip area from a ragged unofficial settlement populated by about 6000 Europeans to a self-governing colony with a white population of over 80 000. When he left in May 1854 the colony of Victoria was in the grip of gold fever and was developing at a rate unprecedented in British colonial history. La Trobe, a cultured, amiable and modest man, maintained a somewhat precarious balance between the conflicting demands of ambitious and unruly settlers and his distant masters in Whitehall. Until the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850 granted Victoria its own representative government he was directly answerable to the governor of New South Wales. He was attacked by his contemporaries in Melbourne for failing to press claims for self-government in either Sydney or London and for not protesting strongly enough against the proposed introduction of convicts. However, he became a hero when he refused to allow a shipload of convicts entry into the colony. With self-government, La Trobe, promoted to the position of lieutenant-governor, controlled the elected representatives through a nominated Executive Council made up of officials who were, like himself, inexperienced in either legislation or politics. Despite all difficulties, he succeeded in maintaining a functioning government and civil order until he left the colony in 1854. Shortly before his departure he received word that his delicate wife Sophie, who had returned to Europe before him with their four children, was dead. He married her widowed sister, Rose de Meuron, in 1855. La Trobe became blind in the 1860s. He died in England on 4 December 1875. Rose and their two children survived him. La Trobe was avidly interested in the exploration of the colony and its flora and fauna. He was an enthusiastic gardener who preserved and planted native plants in his own garden, combining these with imported European species, and he was personally responsible for the establishment of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens and the appointment of Ferdinand von Mueller as government botanist. He travelled extensively on horseback through both settled and newly discovered areas. Invariably he made sketches of the places he visited and his letters, especially those to his wife, contain occasional drawings. All La Trobe’s Victorian sketches appear to have been intended as a private record and no available evidence suggests that his work was ever publicly exhibited or intended for another travel book, although surviving landscapes, such as Opening on the Upper Precipice of Mt William, Grampians. The Elephants in the Plains and Roses Gap. The Grampians (both sepia washes, March 1850), are more competent than most produced in the area at that time. He made numerous pencil, chalk and watercolour sketches of the family’s modest imported prefabricated home, Jolimont, such as Front Door Sep. 1853 (pencil and sepia wash) and Door of Papa’s Dressing Room Jolimont (1847, pencil and sepia wash). The La Trobe Library holds the only public collection of his drawings, many on loan from the National Trust, which now owns Jolimont. Writers: Jones, Shar Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 30 March 1801

Summary

A gifted sketcher, colonial administrator and travel writer, he always recorded his travels, and the illustrations in at least two of his four published travel books were based on his sketchbooks. La Trobe was responsible for the development of the Port Phillip area, from a ragged unofficial settlement of 6,000 Europeans to a self-governing colony with a white population of over 80,000.

Gender

Male

Died

4 December 1875

Age at death

74