Joseph Aresti

1809 - 1878

Lithographic artist

Lithozographia title page

chromolithographer whose early experimentation was recognised at a number of exhibitions in Melbourne and Europe. He also provides a well-documented example of the tragic outcomes that could befall nineteenth-century Collingwood residents.

The Aresti family arrived in November 1857 as cabin passengers on the ship Neptune’s Favourite. Joseph and Emma were in their 40s and their three daughters in their early teens. In London Joseph had worked as a printer and lithographic artist, a sphere of rapidly increasing importance, and the cargo hold transported his materials in 27 packages, three boxes, and a roll. In the early 19th century it had become imperative to find ways of producing coloured images relatively cheaply. The process that would take colour printing to the peaks of technical achievement was chromolithography. It got off the ground toward the end of the 1830s and came to provide late 19th century society with virtually every kind of colour printing artefact, becoming the workhorse of colour printing. (Charles Troedel became Melbourne’s most distinguished exponent of the craft). In London, Aresti, self-styled ‘Lithographer to Her Majesty’ conducted his printing and lithographic business in Greek Street.

Aresti quickly found a place among Melbourne’s educated artistic community where he was described as having connections with some of the principal schools of design in England. Introduced at a December meeting of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts by his friend William Strutt, he was warmly thanked for his offer of a large number of chromo-lithographs which he was ready to place at the disposal of the Society, to be used at their School of Design, and promptly voted onto the committee. Other Collingwood notables associated with the Society were James Smith and John Gilfillan. In May 1859 he was proposed for membership of the Philosophical Institute. In 1860 The Age reported enthusiastically on his work:

Our attention has been recently directed to an invention of manifest importance to the artistic world, and, we may add, from the examples executed in this city, of equal interest to our commercial community, from the superior style and economy which it offers in the reproduction, by the printing press, of the various designs connected with trade and manufactures. We allude to the new art of painting upon stone, which, by a peculiar process, becomes granulated over the whole or portions of the surface, so as to harmonize with the several textures requisite to the general effect. It also combines the advantage of yielding a much larger number of impressions, without deterioration, than the ordinary method.
Amongst the specimens executed in Melbourne of the successful adaptation of this process to oil colour printing, we may mention two of the largest known productions of chromo-tint, the subjects being emblematical, or masonic, tracing boards, each of them covering a surface of more than 10 square foot. The inventor, Mr. Aresti, received the prize at the Paris Universal Exhibition for this invention, which is described by Mr. Aresti in an illustrated work, entitled, Lithozographia ; or, the New Art of obtaining Stippled Gradations upon Drawings, Painted or Washed on Stone or Paper.

The Argus 29 September 1860 p. 4

He had already donated a copy of the 1857 second edition of his book, Lithozographia, to the Public Library (now the State Library of Victoria) where it is still held.

At this time the Aresti family was living in Hotham Street, then just a short thoroughfare between Gold Street and Hoddle Street, forming part of a still sparsely populated 1853 subdivision. In mid-December 1860 Melbourne was inundated with rain and devastated by the ensuing floods. While much of the city and suburbs were under water a newspaper article singled out the residents of Collingwood and Richmond flats who ‘suffer much from the congregation of water which cannot flow off quickly to the river … many of the houses have been temporarily abandoned until the water subsides.’

Emma (Mrs Aresti) was already ill when the Arestis’ house was surrounded by water which would take 12 hours to drain away. On 28 December daughter Julia died and an inquest was held. The Age reported:

[Dr Whitcombe deposed that] the lungs were greatly congested, one of them being quite solidified. There was no congestion of the brain, and he considered death to have been caused by pneumonia brought on by the miasma of Collingwood Flat, and he said that he knew of several similar cases that had also terminated fatally. The jury returned a verdict to the effect that deceased died of congestion, of the lungs, and added a rider, that death was attributable to the inefficient drainage of Collingwood Flat.

The next day her older sister Louisa followed her to the grave, while on the third day the youngest, Rosina, died, her cause of death also listed as congestion of the lungs.

Despite this appalling family tragedy, Aresti had to continue his work. In the Victorian Exhibition held at Melbourne in 1861, in preparation for the 1862 London International Exhibition, Aresti showed a Masonic Painting and 'An Example of the New Process of Preparing Painted or Washed Drawings on Stone; also Examples of Granulations of a Novel Character, developed since it was exhibited at Paris. Exhibited by the [Inventor]’. For these achievements he was locally awarded a first class certificate. He produced a chromolithographed 'Progress map of the Geological Survey of Victoria’ that was well received when shown at the Great Exhibition in London in 1862. (Joseph had also been listed as a surveyor in London, perhaps indicating that he had been lithographing maps while there).

Predictably, Joseph and Emma moved out of the Hotham Street house with its frightful memories. After living briefly in Napier Street Fitzroy, they re-settled in Hoddle Street, Collingwood, but it was only a few years before misery struck again with Emma’s death in 1865. Joseph’s star had shone but briefly, and he gave up on his adopted land, departing Melbourne on the Sussex in March 1866. Although the London census of 1871, and his probate record, still describe him as a lithographic artist, a variety of researchers have been unable to find any evidence of any printing work produced nor prizes and commendations received during these remaining twelve years of his life, which he ended sharing a house with a number of tradesmen including his younger brother Thomas.

Life Summary

Birth Date	Birth Place
1809	Bloomsbury, London, England

Spouse Name	Date of Marriage	Children
Emma Sargeant, c1810 - 1865	17 August 1840 Olveston St Mary, Gloucestershire	Louisa Clara c1841 – 29 December 1860; Julia Emma c1843 – 28 December 1860; Rosannah or Rosina c 1846 – 30 December 1860.