The Lawn at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day

Carl Kahler, artist, was born in Austria and trained in Munich, Paris and Italy. He arrived in Melbourne from London in late 1885, and established a successful portrait practice, numbering the governor, Sir Henry Brougham Loch, and his family amongst his sitters. However, he is best remembered for three major paintings, The Lawn at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day (1887), The Derby Day at Flemington (1888–9) and The Betting Ring at Flemington (1889), which are all owned by the Victoria Racing Club. The key to the promenading racegoers in this print names 73 individuals including the Governors of NSW, Victoria and South Australia, Lord Carrington, Sir Henry Loch, and Sir William Robinson, along with their respective partners. Others of interest include Elise Pfund, the subject of Tom Roberts’s portrait Madame Pfund; Miss Boucicault, the daughter of another of Roberts’s portrait subjects; Arthur Blackwood, a founding director of BHP; and Francis Ormond, a prominent grazier and philanthropist. Kahler’s paintings were highly praised in the newspapers, and they were soon reproduced as prints by the famous firm of Goupil in Paris. In 1890 Kahler left Australia for New Zealand, whence he travelled to San Francisco. There, he was killed in the earthquake of 18 April 1906.