Lot 25

- overall tears and losses which have been stabilsed by conservation
- please contact us for the conservation report
- unexamined out of frame


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Lawsons Auctioneers, Sydney, The Kevin Little Collection Part II - Robertson Stained Glass Studios, 6 April 2022, lot 125

Mickey Johnson (1834-1906), Aboriginal King of Illawarra, was one of the most famous and most photographed Aboriginal inhabitants of the Shoalhaven area in the 19th century. It is thought that he was brought to the Shoalhaven area from the Clarence River District in the 1860s by Major E. H. Weston of Albion Park. After working for Weston for approximately ten years, he moved to Kangaroo Valley with his wife Rosey. In the early 1890s, they moved to Windang on the coast at the mouth of Lake Illawarra. He was proclaimed King of the Illawarra Tribe at the Illawarra Centenary celebrations in 1896 and was presented with an inscribed brass plate. Mickey spent his final years at the aboriginal camp on the flat at Minnamurra River near the bridge. He died in 1906 at age 72, and is buried in Kiama cemetery.

RELATED WORKS:
Edward William Searle (1887-1955), Portrait of King Mickey Johnson, La Perouse, New South Wales, c. 1875, photograph, National Library of Australia, Canberra
Benjamin Edwin Minns (1864-1937), Mrokie Weston (King) / N.S.W South Coast 1920, watercolour on paper, Bonhams, Sydney, The Owston Collection - Day 1, 25 June 2010, lot 253
Unknown Artist, Mickey Johnson c.1896, photograph, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra