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Governor-General, 22 January 1931 to 23 January 1936
Lawyer, parliamentarian, judge, and the first Australian-born Governor-General, Isaac Isaacs (1855-1948) possessed a prodigious work ethic and passionate desire to declare himself an ‘Australian’ in the new Federation.1 Highlighting Isaacs’s extraordinary achievements, Alfred Deakin wrote: ‘the son of a struggling tailor in an up-country town, he had as unpromising an outlook as could well be imagined for such a career as his proved’.2
Isaacs was born in Melbourne, though his family moved to regional Victoria in his youth. At 15 he became a pupil–teacher at Beechworth and continued there until 1875. In 1876, he joined the Crown Law Department in Melbourne and studied law part-time at the University of Melbourne, graduating with first-class honours (1880) and a Master of Laws (1883).3 He began practice at the Victorian Bar in 1882, supplementing his income by writing court reports for the press.
Isaacs married Deborah Jacobs in 1888; they had two daughters.4 By 1899 he ‘was one of the leading figures at the Victorian Bar’ and was appointed a QC.5 Erudite and ambitious, he was elected to the Victorian colonial and early Commonwealth parliaments, serving as Attorney-General in both. A fervent federalist and prominent participant in the 1897–98 Constitutional Convention, he introduced the first Constitution Bill in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
In 1906 Isaacs resigned from the federal Parliament to join the High Court Bench. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor (1921), KCMG (1928), and GCMG (1932). After 23 years on the High Court, Isaacs was elevated to Chief Justice, though he served just 42 weeks,6 as Prime Minister James Scullin nominated him as the next Governor-General.
Isaacs’s appointment was a watershed moment for Australia, after the previous year’s Imperial Conference established ‘that the Governor-General should be appointed on the advice of the Dominion government concerned, after informal consultation with the King’.7 Despite King George V’s declared opposition to appointing a ‘local man’ who was elderly and not personally known to him,8 Scullin remained steadfast in his recommendation. His Majesty eventually assented with a muted press release that said, ‘The King has appointed ...’.9
Isaacs and his wife were the first vice-regal couple to live exclusively at Government House in Yarralumla, which then became the standard.10 Despite his age, ‘he undertook the heavy demands of travel with relish’11 and ‘by his wisdom and dignity he adorned the office, and was one of the most successful and popular Governors-General Australia had to that time’.12 As Australia suffered through the Great Depression, Isaacs declined his retired judge’s pension and a quarter of his salary.13 He was appointed GCB in 1937. He died at the age of 92, having outlived all other members of the 1897-98 Constitutional Convention.14
Sir John Campbell Longstaff
Born in Clunes, Victoria, John Longstaff (1861-1941) was an Australian portraitist, war artist and five-time winner of the Archibald Prize (1925-35). Longstaff studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School alongside Emanuel Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker, Tom Humphrey, John Mather and Frederick McCubbin. Awarded the School’s first travelling scholarship in 1887, he travelled to Europe, settling in Paris and later in Spain. Throughout the early 1890s Longstaff exhibited successfully and in 1893 moved to London where he worked as a fashionable portrait painter, regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. During 1918-20 Longstaff was an official war artist with the AIF. Returning to Australia in 1920, he later held several official positions including president of the Victorian Artists’ Society, the Australian Art Association, the Australian Academy of Art, and a trustee of the Public Library, Museums and National Gallery in Victoria. In 1928 Longstaff became the first Australian artist to be knighted. His work is represented in major state and regional galleries across Australia.15
Isaac Alfred Isaacs
by John Campbell Longstaff
1936
Oil on canvas
136.2 x 95 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1.M Kirby, ‘Sir Isaac Isaacs – a sesquicentenary reflection’, Melbourne University Law Review, vol. 29, issue 3, December 2005, p. 887, accessed 4 October 2021. See also ‘Isaac Alfred Isaacs’ in Historic Memorials Collection Portraits: Governors- General and Historic Memorials Collection Portraits: Justices of the High Court, Parliament of Australia, 2021.
2. A Deakin, The Federal story: the inner history of the Federal cause, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1944, p. 67.
3. Z Cowen, ‘Isaacs, Sir Isaac Alfred (1855–1948)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed 16 September 2021.
4. ‘Isaacs, Lady Deborah (Daisy) (1870–1960)’, Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed 3 October 2021.
5. Kirby, op. cit., p. 883.
6. G Fricke, ‘Isaacs Court’ in T Blackshield, M Coper, and G Williams, eds, The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia, Oxford University Press, accessed 3 October 2021.
7. Z Cowen, ‘Isaacs, Isaac Alfred’, in The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia, Oxford University Press, 2001.
8. Cowen, ‘Isaacs, Sir Isaac Alfred (1855–1948)’, op. cit.
9. Quoted in T Blackshield, ‘The Isaacs Court’, in R Dixon and G Williams eds, The High Court, the Constitution and Australian Politics, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2015, p. 136.
10. C Cunneen, King’s Men: Australia’s Governors-General from Hopetoun to Isaacs, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, p. 183.
11. Z Cowen, ‘Isaacs, Isaac Alfred’, in The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia, op. cit., accessed 10 October 2021.
12. M Gordon, Sir Isaac Isaacs: a life of service, Melbourne, Heinemann, 1963, p. 162.
13. Cowen, ‘Isaacs, Sir Isaac Alfred (1855–1948)’, op. cit.
14. Kirby, op. cit., p. 887.
15. Information in this biography has been taken from: L Astbury, ‘Longstaff, Sir John Campbell (1861–1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1986; K Robertson, ‘Sir John Longstaff’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2011; ‘Longstaff, (Sir) John Campbell’, A McCulloch, S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, eds, The New McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Aus Art Editions in association with The Miegunyah Press, 2006, p. 625. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.