Artist Information
Artist
Hermann Otto Tiedemann (1821-1891)Role
ArtistArtist
Thomas (T.) Ashburton Picken (1818-1891)Role
LithographerArtist
Day & SonRole
PrinterArtist
Day & SonRole
PublisherDate made
Jun 13, 1860Time Period
19th CenturyNotes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Born in Berlin, then Prussia, Hermann Otto Tiedemann was an architect, civil engineer, surveyor and artist. Tiedemann is considered to have established the technical standards and sophisticated architectural style in Victoria that would later be used by his more celebrated successors, Francis Rattenbury and Samuel Maclure.
He immigrated to Vancouver Island in 1858 and became the recently founded colony's first "professional" architect. While the details of his education and are mostly unknown, it is believed he trained as a civil engineer and architect, perhaps at the Berlin Building Academy. He may also have spent a year in California prospecting before journeying north, and in Victoria he was hired by the Colonial Land Office as Assistant and Principal Draughtsman to the colonial surveyor Joseph Despard Pemberton.
In 1859 Tiedemann was commissioned to design the Legislative Buildings near the site of Fort Victoria. Even before finished, the eclectic style of the buildings generated considerable ridicule. Disparaged by the editor of the Daily British Colonist, Amor De Cosmos, The Victoria Gazette called them "fancy birdcages". This criticism prompted Tiedemann to leave architecture for a time.
During this hiatus, he did some architectural and survey projects such as designing the earliest lighthouses on the West Coast at Fisgard Island and Race Rocks. Tiedemann was also involved in the project to pipe water into Victoria from Elk Lake, and surveyed the coal deposits north of Nanaimo. He then left the colonial government service to launch himself into survey work on the Fraser River where he almost drowned. Returning to Victoria, he continued to work as a surveyor and cartographer, and even possibly a teacher of mathematics and drawing.
In 1869 he returned to practicing architecture, designing the original St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, and the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral. Later, Tiedemann completed the Provincial Law Courts on Bastion Square (later altered), considered his most impressive extant work, as well as other residential and commercial building works.
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Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Thomas Ashburton Picken, known professionally as T. Picken, was a watercolourist, engraver and lithographer working in England from ca. 1834 to the late 19th century, specializing in detailed images of landscape, architecture, events of war, and ships. His father was a Scottish novelist, and three of his four brothers were also lithographers. Picken worked, and likely apprenticed, for the printing firm Day and Haghe (later Day & Son) in Camden, London for many years, first coming to notice for his lithograph work when he was only about 16 years old. While there is no evidence that he traveled abroad, he produced many lithographs of foreign countries after paintings done by other artists, working between around 1834 and 1875.
Of note, he produced lithographs of the SS Great Eastern and the laying of the Atlantic cable, and he also illustrated books. Sadly, Picken ended his days as a Poor Brother at The London Charterhouse, alongside his brother James. His lithographs are today held in many collections, including the Royal Collection Trust, the Library of Congress collection and the Royal Academy collection, London.
