Andrew Cunningham (b.1856)

Andrew Cunningham was a Scottish-born painter, decorator and professional photographer who became one of Armidale’s earliest and most significant visual chroniclers. Probably born at Montrose, Scotland, Cunningham was in Armidale, New South Wales, by 1856, when he married Isabella Bowers at St Peter’s Anglican Church. Originally a sailor, and later describing himself as a sawyer, he soon advertised his services in painting, ornamental work and paper-hanging (1857).

By 1859 Cunningham was working as Armidale’s resident photographer, while continuing to identify as a house painter into the late 1860s. He produced portraits and local views, often as cartes de visite, documenting streets, buildings, schools and prominent citizens. In 1870 he claimed to have taken the only photographs of the body of bushranger Captain Thunderbolt (Fred Ward) after his death near Uralla.

Cunningham’s photographs remain an invaluable visual record of Armidale in the nineteenth century. He and Isabella had eight children, including a son who also became an artist.