Oscar Friström / Sweden/Australia 1856–1918 / Duramboi 1893 / Oil on canvas / 46.4 x 40.9cm / Gift of the artist 1895 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Oscar Friström
Duramboi 1893

On Display: QAG, Gallery 10

Oscar Friström’s Duramboi depicts James Davis (1812–89), a Scotsman from Glasgow who was one of colonial Queensland’s more colourful characters. In 1824, in Surrey, England, 12-year-old Davis was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales. When convicted of robbery in Sydney in 1829, he was sentenced to a further three years in Moreton Bay (as Brisbane was then known).

Davis was only 17 when he escaped from the penal settlement later that year. Until his capture in 1842, he lived with several Indigenous tribes, including the Badtjala people of K’gari (Fraser Island), where he earned the name ‘Duramboi’. Davis was initiated (most likely by the Badtjala people) and respected the honour of this by keeping the details of the ceremony a secret.

In later years, Davis became a successful businessman in South Brisbane, where he owned a crockery shop. He died a wealthy man, leaving an estate of 10 000 pounds.

Duramboi (also spelt and known as ‘Durumboi’, ‘Durrumboi’ and ‘Durham Boy’) is faithfully depicted here with sunken eyes, a bow-shaped mouth, and an old velveteen skull cap.

Carl Magnus Oscar Friström was born in 1856 on the island of Sturkö off the south coast of Sweden, the son of a school teacher and a self-taught artist. Friström is first recorded in Brisbane in 1884, having entered works in the Queensland National Association Exhibition’s fine art section, and displaying paintings alongside his photographs. In 1885, he went into a partnership with the Elite Photo Co., and four years later opened his own studio in Adelaide Street. Friström exhibited in Melbourne’s Centennial International Exhibition in 1888 and, during the 1890s, was the art master at All Hallows’ Convent School, Brisbane.

Friström co-founded the Queensland Art Society in 1887 with LWK Wirth and Isaac Walter Jenner, and exhibited scenes from history, studies of classical sculpture and portraits of prominent contemporary figures, including Lady Musgrave (wife of the governor of Queensland) and several members of Parliament. Local Aboriginal figure ‘Catch-Penny’ was a favourite subject for Friström, and works such as his portrait of ‘King Sandy’ (which formed part of the 1888 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne) are of historical importance for their early recording of Queensland’s Indigenous people.

In 1904, Friström and others formed the ‘New Society of Artists’, and he became its first president three years later. He played an important role in amalgamating the two art societies in 1916 and, by 1918, was a member of the Queensland National Art Gallery Board of Advice.1

Endnotes:

1Julie Brown and Margaret Maynard, Fine Art Exhibitions in Brisbane 18841916, Fryer Library, Brisbane, 1980.


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