Post #1465690

#SerenityInOz— a quiz about Australian stuff — Tues 21 April, 2026 (Please boost for reach, and try to CW your answers :questionbox: what’s my name? I was born in somerset, england, in 1818 I arrived in adelaide in 1839 and advertised portrait work and local scenery, "executed to order". One of my early works is a view of Hindley Street, Adelaide, which was published as a coloured print 1844. my activities soon expanded to include street scenes and public events, including the departure of Charles Sturt's expedition for the interior on 8 October 1844. My sketching tours of the districts surrounding Adelaide, produced a number of watercolours. there was not a lot of demand for photography, so i sold my camera before leaving with John Horrocks' expedition northwards to the Flinders Ranges later in 1846. While on this expedition i made the first sketch of these ranges in organised an exhibition to sell the watercolours and pencil sketches of this fateful trip, but sales were slow and i was eventually forced to raffle them. In 1849 i published Heads of the People, which contained 12 lithographic sketches of well-known South Australian colonists In 1851 gold was discovered in Victoria and, following a series of personal tragedies including bankruptcy and ill health, i headed for the Mount Alexander gold fields, Victoria. i was soon recording life on the gold fields and the emergence of substantial towns like those of Ballarat and Bendigo. By August 1852 i had published a set of 24 lithographs of "Sketches of the Victoria Gold Diggings and Diggers As They Are". 1852 i moved to Melbourne where my exhibition of sketches and watercolours from the goldfields attracted so much attention that i was engaged to reproduce the works on lithographic stone The entire set was republished in London. In February 1853, i exhibited some watercolour drawings made from sketches done on the Horrocks expedition. i spent most of the remainder of my life in melbourne, where further volumes of my lithographs were published mostly i am remembered because the Melbourne Public Library (now state library of victoria) commissioned watercolours of life on the goldfields my success did not last, and in 1880 i was buried in a pauper’s grave in 1913 the historical society of victoria erected a gravestone over my remains, with my name and the legend “The artist of the goldfields”.