Antonia Blaxland (1929-1989), photographer, was the great-great granddaughter of Gregory Blaxland, leader of the successful Blue Mountains expedition in 1813. Her parents, Helen and Gregory Blaxland, were significant collectors of the work of Sydney artists. Helen Blaxland, a published exponent of the art of floral arrangement, worked for the Red Cross and played a major part in setting up the National Trust, founding its women’s committee and later becoming its vice-president. One of Helen Blaxlands’s initiatives was the exhibition No Time to Spare!, featuring photographs of early buildings by Max Dupain. Later, she was created DBE. Growing up in Woollahra, Antonia was educated at Frensham, Mittagong, and on finishing school she appears to have had some photographic training from Max Dupain. In 1950 she went overseas to ski (‘Miss Antonia Blaxland had barely touched land in England before she dashed to Switzerland for the winter sports. She left an impression here of some lovely clothes, especially her pancake berets.’) By the middle of that year she was working in the studio of Douglas Glass, a leading London photographer. On her return to Australia she made the best of her family connections, photographing interiors by Marion Hall Best, for example, as well as ski events in Australia and New Zealand. In 1959 she married the divorcee Richard Macarthur-Stanham and they lived henceforth at Camden Park House, which he had inherited from his mother. They had two children. Antonia predeceased her mother, Helen Blaxland.
