The Coffee Nursery, New Hebrides. Albumen photographic print by J.W. Lindt 1890

LINDT, John William (1845-1926). The Coffee Nursery, Rathmoy Estate, Efate, New Hebrides.
New Hebrides, 1890.
 
Original albumen photographic print, 195 x 145 mm. Captioned and numbered within the negative at the lower edge: "1542. The Coffee Nursery, Rathmoy Estate. Lindt, Melb." Unmounted on thin photographic paper, with slight natural curl and minor handling. Later pencil identification to the reverse; very good.
 
An uncommon photograph from John William Lindt's 1890 expedition to the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, showing two Indigenous labourers working among the densely planted coffee bushes of the nursery at Rathmoy Estate on Efate. Rathmoy was a European-owned plantation at Undine Bay, established during the development of commercial coffee cultivation in the New Hebrides. Lindt's photograph records both the carefully ordered plantation landscape and the labour on which the colonial enterprise depended.
 
The number 1542 is Lindt's studio negative number. Prints could be produced from the original glass negative and supplied through his Melbourne studio, with the caption and number appearing photographically in each impression. Lindt was one of the most important photographers active in colonial Australia and the western Pacific. His New Hebrides photographs form a significant visual record of the islands, their inhabitants and the expanding plantation economy at the end of the nineteenth century. An unmounted example with an identified location, strong visual content and clear Lindt studio attribution.