Born in Lincolnshire, Charles Hewitt (1837–1912) had begun working in Melbourne by 1860 and was one of the founding members of the Photographic Society of Victoria. Initially he was in business with Charles Nettleton in a studio on Bourke Street East, but he was working independently by 1866. Examples of his work were included in the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition that year, and he was awarded an honourable mention for his 'fancy dress portraits'. Around 1866 or 1867, Hewitt opened his own studio – The Australasian Studio – at 95 Swanston Street, but he declared insolvency in 1878, citing 'falling-off in business, illness in family, and having to pay heavy interest on borrowed money' as the cause of the studio's collapse. He later had a studio in South Melbourne, and in 1892 he moved to Stawell, where he died in 1912. His known works include a suite of carte de visite portraits of members of the first Australian sporting team to tour overseas – the Indigenous cricketers who travelled to England in 1868 – and photographic reproductions of equestrian portraits by Frederick Woodhouse and Thomas Lyttleton, which illustrated the 1871 edition of the Victorian Stud-Book.
