Cover, ‘International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers’, Writers and Production Artists, Volume 4, Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, St. James Press, Farmington Hills, MI, GALE, 4th edition, 12 December 2000, ISBN-10: 1558624503, ISBN-13: 978-1558624504.
The late Dr. Thomas Leonard Erskine (1939-2011) contributed the entry on Robert Krasker to the year 2000’s 4th edition of the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers and it is one of the more detailed I have come across so far save for his date and place of birth and with whom he entered the industry.
So far as I can tell this four-volume tome has not been updated since 2000 but if it does then I would hope that the editors will make these somewhat minor corrections.
Fact Checks
“Born: Perth, Western Australia, 12 August 1913” – 1913, August 21: Robert Krasker was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His family had stopped over there during a business trip from Australia to Europe and back. 1914, January 28: Robert Krasker’s birth in Alexandria, Egypt, was registered in Perth, Western Australia with the family address being noted as 99 Hay Street, Subiaco, Western Australia.
Robert Krasker began his film industry career assisting and translating for American cinematographer Philip Tannura at Paramount-France in its Joinville-le-Pont studios, named Les Studios des Paramount, and both filmmakers then moved to London in 1931 following producer/director Alexander Korda to Paramount-British to work on Leslie Howard star vehicle Service for Ladies after which Korda invited Krasker to join his new London Film Productions company as apprentice and camera operator for French Director of Photography Georges Périnal.
Cover, Ships Registered in Western Australian from 1856 to 1969: Their Details, Their Owners & Their Fate. Image courtesy of Rod Dickson and maritimeheritage.org.
Ships Registered in Western Australian from 1856 to 1969: Their Details, Their Owners & Their Fate, by Rod Dickson
Introduction
Originally these registers were transcribed for my own personal maritime research but, as time went by, it became evident that they were important to other researchers, maritime and in other fields.
Mr Mike McCarthy encouraged me in the work and as it progressed it was published as a paper, (No. 80), in March 1994 for the Maritime Museum at Fremantle in eight volumes, each with its own index and biographical index.
These eight volumes, however, proved to be unwieldy and it was decided to redo them as a single entity. Since the original version was finished research has enabled me to add further information on the vessels, their operations and their fate and this has been added to the publication as it came to light.
Sometimes, just sometimes, exactly the right information suddenly pops up right at the top of search results and it not only fills in some gaps but reveals something unexpected but invaluable.
That occurred earlier this week when I was following up on a phone conversation with someone in the library at the Australian Maritime Museum who told me that Leon and Mathilde Krasker had owned shares in two pearling boats in the north-west of Western Australia.
A search engine turned up a huge PDF containing their names three times over, against three boats, and also revealed the name Mark Rubin against over 30 other vessels.
This had to be the Mark Rubin written about in Dr Falk Schwarz’s book about Robert Krasker, BSC, the Mark Rubin whose success in the north-west of WA had inspired Mathilde and Leon to risk everything as strangers in a strange land, sail to Fremantle, travel up the coast and set themselves up as pearl buyers and dealers as Mark Rubin had done not long before.
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Mark Rubin (1867–1919):
Soon after 1900 Mark moved to Broome, Western Australia, centre of the pearling industry, where he quickly became a leading pearl dealer, travelling yearly to London. He also owned a large pearling fleet. About 1901 the family moved to London, although Mark continued to spend most of his time in Australia. Believing that war in Europe was inevitable and that wool would be more in demand than pearls, he bought several large sheep stations in 1912-13, including de Grey and Warrawagine near Port Hedland, Western Australia, and Northampton Downs in Queensland. He also transferred his pearl-dealing business to London and Paris. Mark died at Fontainebleau, France, on 6 November 1919, leaving a fortune.
Leon Krasker had travelled from Broome to Fremantle on 12 October 1907 on the Charon, just one leg in a probable round trip from Britain to Western Australia and back.
His imminent arrival in Fremantle on the Oruba from London earlier that year had been announced in a publication named Empire of Saturday 24 August 1907, and further research may turn up passenger lists with further details.
Mark Rubin appears to have already been well set-up financially before arriving in Broome from the eastern states after engaging in various businesses there whereas Leon, Mathilde and their then young family of one boy and two girls had left Hackney in London in straitened circumstances according to Dr Schwarz’s book, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker.
Fact Checks
“Leon Kracker” – His name is, of course Leon Krasker despite official documents and newspapers mistakenly naming him as Louis and other variations of given name and surname.
“Mathilde Kracker” – In the same way, her name is actually Mathilde Krasker.
Cover, Cinema, Volume 1, Number 1, 1963, published by Spectator, International, Inc. in the USA from 1962 to 1976 according to Wikipedia.
Yesterday I turned up a magazine about film that I knew nothing about until I discovered all the issues from just one year, 1963, at the Internet Archive. The publication is named, simply, Cinema and its design and writing styles are reminiscent of an almost now forgotten magazine publishing mini-revolution that was born in the 1960s in Germany then spread to Great Britain, and, via Cinema, to the United States.
Given I grew up in several remote towns in Western Australia sandwiched between desert and ocean, not unlike Robert Krasker, I was exposed to few books and magazines during my formative years.
It was only when I moved to the capital city of Perth – “the most remote capital city in the world” – that I came across a small collection of art, design and photography books and magazines in the art school’s library.
It was in one of those magazines that I came across mention of an art direction genius named Willy Fleckhaus and the revolutionary German magazine for which he was responsible, Twen, and although the library held no copies of it, other publications there mentioned past British magazines that may have learned some lessons from its design, photography, typography and writing – Nova and Queen.
Neither were in publication by the time I went looking for them but other stylish and style-oriented magazines had appeared in the UK by then, including i-D and especially The Face with its exquisite typography and page design by Neville Brody.
Brody pushed the early and sometimes timid innovations of Twen, Nova and Queen into the 1980s at The Face and pushed the arts and crafts of type design and typography into realms those pre-Macintosh magazine designers may well have never imagined.
When I conceived and co-founded former cult Australian photography, visual arts and culture magazine not only Black+White my aim was to go even further beyond Brody’s innovations into something newer again and in a direction more appropriate to the state of Australia culture in the 1990s.
As I did not actually own the magazine my suggestions carried little weight and were often pooh-poohed or simply misunderstood, and they were also dependent on finding a great magazine art director to fulfil them.
Eventually one turned up and during an all too short time in the art director’s chair there, he won fifteen international awards for his innovative and expressive typography, article and cover designs.
Back to Robert Krasker, Cinema and El Cid…
It has been suggested more than a few times that I should put together a book about Robert Krasker, one that goes well beyond Dr Falk Schwarz’s 2012 publication, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker in scope and approach, something more than a simple translation of that book from German into English.
In theory I agree given Dr Schwarz’s European readership certainly know who Robert Krasker was and what he achieved but am sceptical about an Australian publisher taking on such a task given virtually no Australian to whom I speak about our greatest ever cinematographer knows who he was or of the many famous films upon which he worked.
“While not a film for the Eisenstein worshiper, the cinematography of Robert Krasker has magnificent moments, especially in his use of the actual backgrounds and interiors.”
If the miraculous were to occur, however, I would hope such a book would be graphically and typographically innovative in ways not dissimilar to those first explored in magazines like Cinema, Twen, Nova, Queen, The Face and i-D.
As to why and how, those are subjects for another article here sometime soon.
British actor Terence Stamp is in the news once again in relation to a sequel to another film to be shot in Australia as well as locations beyond these shores.
So, it seemed appropriate to share a little more about the actor, the film that gave him his brilliant cinematic career and the Australian Director of Photography who played a role in helping him get there with his very first part, something of a minor miracle.
Billy Budd was a departure for Robert Krasker from the Technicolor widescreen epics that late 1950s and early 1960s Hollywood believed would persuade its formerly dedicated movie audiences to tear themselves away from their television screens.
“Robert Krasker, Ustinov’s cinematographer, was a legend who ranged from epic comedies like Caesar and Cleopatra to classic dramas like Brief Encounter.”
Krasker began his filmmaking career at Les Studios Paramount in the south-eastern Parisian suburb of Joinville-le-Pont with three remakes of a US Paramount Pictures film, with all versions in black and white or, as it was often referred to in Europe, monochrome.
His first few projects at Alexander Korda’s London Film Productions where he was apprenticed to French Director of Photography Georges Périnal were in monochrome, too, but DoP and apprentice-cum-camera operator both earned their stripes as colour cinematographers when Korda made a deal with Technicolor to site its British processing and printing laboratory onsite at his Denham Studios complex in Buckinghamshire west of London.
After Krasker became a Director of Photography in his own right, his first few projects were shot in black and white but the big breakthrough that led to him being hailed as “The Man for Colour” came with DoPing Henry V for actor/director Laurence Olivier.
From then onwards Robert Krasker would jump between the two forms, monochrome and colour, as story and budget required, and Billy Budd did not have budget enough for Technicolor.
A well-matched unit, Krasker and Ustinov
Peter Ustinov was well-suited to tackling a war film about characters with ambiguous motivations, according to Michael Sragow:
In many ways, Ustinov was in his wheelhouse—he was part of a generation of veterans. During his British Army service in World War II, he had collaborated with thriller-writer Eric Ambler and the great director Carol Reed (best known for Odd Man Out and The Third Man, both shot by Krasker) on the famous propaganda feature The Way Ahead, which dramatized a lieutenant (David Niven) molding conscripts into a fighting unit. Ustinov himself despised being in the army: he called it “a nightmare school for backward adults, in which degrees could be achieved in monstrous disciplines.”
Krasker (underclass) and Ustinov (upperclass) intimately understood the true nature of the British Empire’s class system and its expressions and impositions through architecture, clothing and space:
What sustains the film’s suspense is its piquant clarity about the everyday dangers of an eighteenth century sailor’s life (an exotic extra for today’s audiences, now that Tall Ship adventures are no longer a popular genre). Ustinov and Krasker exploit nautical space to brew up an enveloping aura. They convey the emotional and physical dynamics of every onboard experience, from the sailors sleeping on hammocks in close quarters to the vertiginous loneliness and fear of a foretopman climbing the foremast. Their visual limpidity enables us to “read” the class bias built into the architecture of the ship, from the quarter deck down to the hold, as easily as we do the gaps between upstairs and downstairs on Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey.
Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC made three epic feature films with American director Anthony Mann – El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire and The Heroes of Telemark – and the first two were produced by Samuel Bronston from his base in Madrid at Chamartin Studios.
It is likely that Robert Krasker, who grew up between yellow-orange desert and sparkling shallow sea-edge in the remote Shark Bay township of Denham in Western Australia, made his decision to buy a connected pair of apartments in the Andalusian city of Marbella, about this time: my research into specific times and dates continues.
“Robert Krasker, … one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting.”
Krasker had moved into his Sloane Square apartment in the late 1950s after his courageous and remarkable mother Mathilde died and family connections with the western suburbs of London had dissolved.
Did the light and warmth of the Costa del Sol bring psychological and physical comfort and relief from the almost lifelong debilitation caused by malaria contracted in Sudan while camera-operating in 1938 for The Four Feathers and the Type 1 diabetes to which it led?
Samuel Bronston’s “El Cid”, page 38:
THE CAMERMAN
ROBERT KRASKER, Academy Award-winning director of photography for his memorable lensing of “The Third Man,” is considered to be one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting. He has been lauded for his work on such pictures as “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Trapeze.” Although the Australian-born Krasker has photographed all types of pageantry, he feel that “El Cid” offered his greatest opportunity because of the many real-life settings of ancient castles and towns, as well as the multitude of panoramic scenes.
Wikipedia – Samuel Bronston – “Bronston frequently worked with a regular team of creative artists: the directors Anthony Mann and Nicholas Ray, the screenwriters Philip Yordan and Jesse Lasky Jr., composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa, the co-producers Jaime Prades, Alan Brown and Michał Waszyński, the cinematographer Robert Krasker and film editor Robert Lawrence. He also favoured Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren as his leading actors.”
The Ocean Fell into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: 1910924539, ISBN-13: 978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.
Robert Krasker has been credited with helping Terence Stamp get his big break into the film industry via bleach, hair dye, sunburn and Krasker’s usual brilliant lighting, image and motion design.
Terence Stamp is one of the last people now living who knew Robert Krasker in a professional capacity and, having worked with him on two films, Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd and William Wyler’s The Collector, has some anecdotes about the Australian cinematographer to share.
Meanwhile here is how Dr Falk Schwarz wrote about the hair bleach incident in his book on the great Australian cinematographer, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker:
“We’ll get you as sunburnt as possible, and then we dye your hair to ash-blond and I can make you look like an angel!”
— Robert Krasker to Terence Stamp
1Audio Commentary by Terence Stamp and Steven Soderbergh on Billy Budd DVD, Warner Video 110801.
As I am unable to access that DVD I went in search of other sources and came across an even better description written by Terence Stamp himself:
Pages 28 and 29, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: 1910924539, ISBN-13: 978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.
Robert Krasker was the director of photography, a real Turner of light. He’d lit The Third Man, held as ‘the’ example of black-and-white photography. In this regard I believe he’d suggested to the director that my dark hair should be dyed blonde. I endured four hours of peroxide, yet it was worth it, as I will explain later. His lighting plan was my first hurdle, as I could hardly keep my eyes open once under the intensity of Krasker, sunlight, carbon arcs and reflector boards. He had me face the full intensity of his lighting with closed eyes, only opening them on ‘Action’. He advised me never to wear sunglass as they would weaken my eyes’ resistance to light. I have followed his advice to this day.
Pages 30 and 31, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: 1910924539, ISBN-13: 978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.
‘Action!’
Listening to it as the noose slipped over my head, I slowly faced the mutinous crew.
‘Cut!’
Ustinov smiles to me. He turns to Robert Krasker, who nods. Ustinov looks toward the sound team. OK.
He smiles again to me.
‘I feel we got that, folks.’
It was to be the final shot in the film for me.
I shall go deeper into what happened to me during that take as it was my very first step into a new standpoint that would change the direction of my life.
Pages 32 and 33, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: 1910924539, ISBN-13: 978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.
Such a shock it was to see myself up there on the big screen, looking as I had never looked in life, courtesy of Peter Ustinov and the diminutive giant of light, Robert Krasker. On reflection, my decision to concentrate my energies solely on celluloid was made that night, and whilst I didn’t see life in such terms then, I must have realised the universe was telling me something. The second implosion was my final scene in the film, ending with Herman Melville’s line, ‘God bless Captain Vere.’
The transcendental moment that had happened to me on that single last take on location left not a dry eye in the house. And while it was the last thing I was aware of that evening, my sails became set for new horizons.
Pages 38 and 39, The Ocean Fell into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: 1910924539, ISBN-13: 978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.
It was a really nice surprise when the shoot relocated to England—Kent, as it happened—and I discovered Bob Krasker, the DP who had done so well by me as Billy Budd, was lighting the exteriors, this time in colour.
I couldn’t overlook how well my work was working out, the opportunity I had learning from a great man like [William] Wyler so early in my carer, and how the fundamentals he made clear to me would equip me later when I encountered lesser directors. and even one who didn’t want me at all. …
The Collector was a Wyler classic; Samantha [Eggar] and I won the Best Actress and Best Actor awards respectively at Cannes 1965, and she was nominated for an Academy Award.
Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor, The Theatre Guild, date and other publication details unknown. Image courtesy of Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/laurenceoliviers0000shak/mode/2up
I have encountered more than a little misinformation, disinformation, untrue facts and bizarre untruths in the course of researching the Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC so it is rewarding when I find documents by the makers of the films upon which he worked, such as this pamphlet by the Two-Cities production company which commissioned Krasker to film Laurence Olivier’s Henry V.
Unfortunately only three pages of The Theatre Guild’s pamphlet are currently available for viewing at Internet Archive: the production credits page and the front and back cover.
Nonetheless the production credits page has already proven to be an invaluable testament to two key members of the film’s camera department, Director of Photography Robert Krasker and Camera Operator Jack Hildyard.
I have observed some confusion in dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other books and magazine articles about Henry V and its makers, about whom its cinematographers actually were.
Often, for example, both Robert Krasker and Jack Hildyard are mistakenly credited as joint cinematographers for Henry V whereas Krasker is clearly the Director of Photography and Hildyard is definitely the camera operator as attested to by this pamphlet.
According to Dr Falk Schwarz, this is the full complement of Henry V‘s camera department:
Director of Photography: Robert Krasker; CameraOperator: Jack Hildyard; Assistant Camera: Norman Foley, Irvin Pannaman; Focus Puller: Freddie Ford; Clapper Loader: Jim Body.
Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor, The Theatre Guild, date and other publication details unknown. Image courtesy of Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/laurenceoliviers0000shak/mode/2up
Just one more thing…
Speaking of fact checks, one fact I really want to check with primary sources or at least good quality secondary sources is whether Robert Krasker, BSC was also Head of the Camera Department at Two Cities Films as some publications I’ve come across have asserted.
That would make two British film production companies for which he was camera department head with the other one being RKO-British as attested to by the British Fim Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine.
Images of more pages found on the Web from Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor pamphlet:
I’ve been searching for more pages from the pamphlet as I’d hoped they would contain an explanation of the colour and set design decisions made by Olivier and his art director, choices that received some degree of criticism over the years including, according to Dr Falk Schwarz, from Robert Krasker himself.
In Henry V, the problem was to present Shakespeare in the modern visual idiom. We couldn’t use the normal technique of ‘cutting’ a scene into short sequences because that would have ruined the soliloquies. So we had to make the picture ‘flow’ with the words.”
– Robert Krasker 1
Despite the fame and acclaim won by Laurence Olivier’s production of Henry V, and the high praise awarded to Robert Krasker for his cinematography to this day, the two never worked together again.
And so the style was found and the shooting script made. Robert Krasker, who was a very brilliant lighting cameraman, frankly never took to the style at all; each time I showed him a new set he would look at it, shrug and say ‘Looks terribly phoney’.
– Laurence Olivier 2
Something similar occurred with Krasker and director David Lean on the set of Great Expectations which was to be their second film together after the success of Brief Encounter. The opening sequence Krasker shot for the former wins high praise to this day but Lean fired him immediately afterwards, believing the legendary Australian not to be up to the task of photographing the rest of the latter.
We can only imagine the brilliant work Krasker might have made of Olivier’s subsequent Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet and Richard II, just as we can only imagine what he could have done with Lawrence of Arabia and other David Lean films.
Fact Checks
“Robert Krasker—The Director of Photography” – Correct.
“Jack Hildyard—Operating Cameraman” – Correct.
Links
Wikipedia – RKO Pictures – RKO-British aka RKO British Productions was a division or spin-off of RKO Pictures aka RKO Radio Pictures.
Kevin Desmond, A Glimpse of Krasker, Eyepiece, London, Part 1: September 1990, Part 2: November 1990, page 25.
Laurence Olivier, Bekenntnisse Eines Schauspielers, ISBN 10: 3362002722, ISBN 13: 9783362002721, 1988, page 155; Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1982, ISBN 10: 0671417010.
Caption for above photograph, Sight and Sound magazine, January 1950, page 12:
ROBERT KRASKER: 37 years old, Australian born, he is one of the most brilliant cameramen in Britain to-day. He began work as assistant in the Paramount studios in Paris, and later became head of the RKO-British camera department. Since the war he has photographed Henry V, Odd Man Out, Brief Encounter, Uncle Silas and The Third Man. In black-and-white his style is almost immediately distinctive, with its delicately low-keyed, often romantic images; but that he is not merely a mannerist, his beautiful control of colour in Henry V showed, and the simpler, plainer black-and-white technique he is using for State Secret will show again. As well as being one of the most accomplished British cameramen, Krasker is also one of the most untemperamental and modest.
Sight and Sound magazine, January 1950, pages 10-12, ‘Film in the Making: State Secret’:
Further text extracts:
The cameraman on State Secret is Robert Krasker (who photographed Odd Man Out and The Third Man). The chase-shot (opposite) is recognizably Krasker in lighting and composition, but on the whole State Secret offers few opportunities for the ingenious low-key effects which have distinguished his work with Reed in particular; he is employing for the most part an unemphatic, straight-forward style, and finds the picture an exercise in plainer high-key photography. In the studio, I watched the scene of an official Vosnian reception being shot; the set is a banqueting hall, where Government presentations are being made—medals to various dignitaries and an award to the American doctor for his achievements in medical science. (A scene reminiscent of Hitchcock in its combination of ordinariness and undercurrents of tension—the presentation is actually a trick to get the doctor in the hall.)
Leon Krasker, Denham Cemetery, Denham, Shark Bay Shire, Western Australia, Australia. “In loving memory of Leon, Beloved husband of Mathilde Krasker, died 26th September, 1916, aged 39 years. He left his home in health and strength, No thought of death was near, He had no time to say farewell, To those he loved so dear.” Image courtesy of Find A Grave at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208683139/leon-krasker.
Extract and rough translation from Farbige Schatten: Der Kameramann Robert Krasker, by Dr Falk Schwarz, published in 2012:
A riding accident
Leon Krasker went about his business, the family had settled down in Shark Bay, which at the time was repeatedly noted as Sharks Bay on official documents. The Kraskers lived at 25 Knight Terrace (known as “the pearl dealer’s cottage”) on Denham’s seafront, right on the Indian Ocean. Leon Krasker became a valued member of the community. He had organized his pearl trading tightly and rode his horse Battler every week to buy pearls from the fishermen along the coast. The ride on his horse was risky because Leon Krasker had lost a leg in an accident and was wearing a cork prosthesis. Again and again he was asked to drive in a carriage because it seemed safer. One day he didn’t come back.
The Shark Bay Chronicle provides an account of Leon Krasker’s final hours:
“Krasker used to ride a horse called ‘Battler’ over to Monkey Mia and Herald Bight to buy pearls. When he returned he always brought mail in his saddle bags from the men at the various pearling settlements. He would take the letters to the post office, and the post mistress Gladys Lloyd would put the letters in the mail bag for the next State ship.
He was always punctual. One day the ship was due and when there was no sign of Krasker, Mrs Lloyd became anxious about him. A search party set out from town on horseback and found Krasker’s body on the road three miles from the turn-off on the road to Herald Bight.
He had stopped to open a gate, and on re-mounting had been thrown from his horse, and in the fall had broken his good leg. The unfortunate man began dragging himself along the ground towards a distant sheep watering point. However the effort was too much and his strength ran out before he could reach it. He perished on the lonely track. Leon Krasker had a notebook and pencil with him, and before he died he scribbled a note relating what had happened to him and wrote a will.”
Leon Krasker did not make it to this simple water outlet. To date it is known in Denham as Krasker’s Tank.
The cause of death is entered on the official certificate: “Fell from horse and broke leg and perished from shock on the beach 12 miles from Denham.” He died 11 miles from Denham. The day of his death was dated September 26, 1916. In his last notes shortly before his death he wrote to his wife:
“I start back for the tank and failed where you will find me – the thirst killed me. I am sorry to die before (my) life time, ma chérie, I leave everything for you.”
Three days later, the burial took place according to the Church of England rite in Shark Bay Cemetery. On the tombstone it says:
In loving memory of Leon Beloved husband of Mathilde Krasker died 26th September, 1916 aged 39 years He left his home in health and strength No thought of death was near He had no time to say farewell To those he loved so dear.
This tragedy left the family helpless and disconsolate. Leon had died in the middle of his life, in the middle of constructing his life’s work, in the midst of his business as a pearl dealer. He was survived by five dependent children aged 3 to 11 years.
What should Mathilde Krasker do? Going back to parents and in-laws in France was impossible because the First World War was raging in Europe. A voyage by ship was unthinkable in 1916. So there was nothing left but to take over her husband’s role and, in addition to looking after the children, continued the business as best she could. On a business trip on board the ship Ormonde to Melbourne in 1920, she stated that her profession was “merchant”.
Picturegoer, 7 June 1947, ‘Photographing the Stars’ by Robert Krasker. Image courtesy of State Library of New South Wales via its Find My Past account.
The Robert Krasker Project 