general hospital. With this work he combined a general practice which laid the foundation of his influence amongst the people of Hobart. Yet he found time for studies in science and art; one of the founders of the Tasmanian Royal Society, he joined the council in 1851, and became honorary secretary in 1860.
In 1877 Agnew gave up his practice and entered the legislative council as member for Hobart at the general election of July 1877. From 9 Aug. 1877 to 5 March 1878 he served with Philip Oakley Fysh as minister without a portfolio, and continued in the ministry as reconstructed under Giblin till 20 Dec. 1878. He was again in office with Giblin from 29 Oct. 1879 to 5 Feb. 1880, when he resigned in order to visit the Melbourne Exhibition, being president of the Tasmanian Commission; thence he proceeded to England (see Fenton's Hist. Tasm. p. 370, note).
Returning from England in 1881, Agnew re-entered the legislative council in 1884. On 8 March 1886 he formed a ministry in succession to (Sir) Adye Douglas [q. v. Suppl. II], and was premier till 29 March 1887; he was also chief secretary till 1 March. His tenure of office was marked by educational reform. In 1891 he left the colony for a long visit to England, returning to Tasmania in 1894, when he was made K.C.M.G. In 1899 he was disabled by illness, and died at Hobart on 8 Nov. 1901. He was accorded a public funeral and buried at the Cornelian Bay cemetery.
'Good doctor Agnew' left his mark on Tasmania alike in public life, science, and art. He was a contributor to the 'Journal' of the Tasmanian Royal Society, his chief papers (1843 and 1864) being on the poison of Tasmanian snakes. He was a liberal donor to the museum at Hobart, of which, as well as of the botanic garden, he was the first chairman. In 1888 he bore the cost of the last shipment of salmon ova to Tasmania. He was a member of the council of education and of the university till 1891, when he resigned on absence from the colony. He was also president of the racing club.
Agnew married: (1) in 1846, Louisa Mary, daughter of Major J. Fraser of the 78th highlanders; she died on 10 March 1868; by her he had eight children, of whom one married daughter survives; (2) in 1878, Blanche, daughter of William Legge, of Tipperary, widow of Rev. Dr. Parsons of Hobart; she died without issue on 16 Dec. 1891.
A portrait painted by Tennyson Cole is in the Art Gallery in Hobart.
[Tasmanian Mail, 9 and 16 Nov. 1901 (with portrait); Mennell's Dict. Australas. Biog.; Burke's Colonial Gentry, ii. 592; Tasmanian Blue Books; private information.]
AGNEW, Sir WILLIAM, first baronet (1825–1910), art dealer, was born at Salford on 20 Oct. 1825. The family derive from the Sheuhan branch of Agnew of Lochnaw. William's grandfather, John Agnew (1751–94) of Culhorn, migrated to Liverpool. His father, Thomas Agnew (1794-1871), who in boyhood studied drawing and modelling there, became a partner in 1816 of Vittore Zanetti, a dealer in clocks and opticians' wares, of Market Street Lane, Manchester. The firm soon took up picture dealing. The elder Agnew was from 1835 sole proprietor of the concern, to which he added a print-selling and print-publishing branch. He served as mayor of Salford 1850-1. His portrait by J. P. Knight, R.A., is in the Peel Park Museum, Salford, to which he gave many pictures (cf. The Intellectual Observer, 1871, pp. 253-4; Art Journal, 1861, p. 319; The Dawn, 24 April 1884; Axon's Annals of Manchester, 1886, p. 327). He was a fervent Swedenborgian (Bayley's New Church Worthies, 1881). He married, on 17 Feb. 1823, Jane, daughter and coheir of William Lockett (d. 1856), first mayor of Salford; by her he had five sons, of whom William was the eldest, and four daughters.
Educated at the Rev. J. H. Smithson's Swedenborgian school, Salford, William and his younger brother Thomas (1827-1883), who adhered through life to their father's Swedenborgian faith, early joined their father's business, which rapidly developed under their control. They were partners from 1850, when the firm took the style of Thomas Agnew & Sons. Establishing branches in London (first at Waterloo Place and from 1876 at Old Bond Street), as well as in Liverpool, they had the chief share in the formation during the middle period of the century of the great art collections in the north of England and the Midlands–the Mendel, Gillott, and many others. Among the collections, chiefly of old masters, which they helped to form between 1870 and 1890, were those of Sir Charles Tennant and Lord Iveagh. From 1860 onwards they purchased largely at Christie's (see Redford's Art Sales, ii. passim), where William Agnew usually
