ALEXANDER HORACE BURKITT was born in Fleet St London in 1807. By age 13 he was attracted to the art of drawing. He experimented with watercolours, oils, etching on copper-plate, glyphography (an electro-type process giving raised copy of engraved plate for use in letterpress printing) and lithography. He even tried wood carving. In his early 20s he became acquainted with George Cruikshank, a satirical draughtsman, who illustrated Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
He married Jane Goldsmith of Sudbury in 1833 and was a clerk in the Bank of England for twenty-nine years. He was very interested in antiquities and his articles, sketches and etchings were published in both the British Archaeological journals and the publications of the Antiquarian Etching Club during the 1840s and 50s. He was one of the illustrators of the book, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. by George Williams Fulcher, which was published in 1856. One of his etchings, Figure of a Satyr adduced against Henry III of France as a proof of sorcery, is held at the British Museum.
After his wife died and with his remaining children, he followed his eldest son, Horace, to Australia in 1854. For the next 10 years he worked and travelled around Victoria and south-eastern South Australia. He often sketched and painted what he saw. In August 1862, while he was an assistant at the Williamstown Observatory he painted a watercolour of it which is held by the Museum Victoria. Shortly afterwards he travelled with the priest Julian Edmund Tenison Woods helping him with his book, Geological Observations in South Australia (London, 1862). He made many sketches which were used to illustrate the book. With regard to these engravings, Woods noted in his preface:
The views are from photographs. The fossils, &c., are from drawings by Mr. Alexander Burkitt, of Williamstown Observatory, Melbourne… This opportunity is taken of returning very grateful thanks to that gentleman for his exertions in perfecting the illustration of the work.
Woods’s A History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia (2 vols, London 1865) thanked Burkitt (who by then had left his position at the observatory) for the maps and sketches and “a terrible amount of copying”.
Other drawings by Burkitt now grace the shire offices and local museums in many of the places he visited. He also drew up a map showing explorations in Australia which was published in 1863.
In 1864, on his way to Queensland, his spent some days in Sydney visiting Botany Bay and Manly and doing sketches of the local scenery. He also painted a sketch of Spicer’s Gap as he journeyed from Warwick to Ipswich.
He settled in Ipswich, Queensland. Already a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, he also became a member of various scientific and artistic societies as well as assisting with the publication of a small paper after the style of London Punch. In 1871 Alexander Horace retired to Cleveland where he died in 1873.
