portrait, landscape and transparency painter, was born in Marylebone, London, son of Nathaniel Snell Chauncy, merchant, and Ann Cram, née Bannerman. He was presumably a relative of Philip Snell Chauncy , Martha Berkeley and Theresa Walker . Chauncy studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and later in Paris. He appears to have come to New South Wales about 1864. Sydney directories for 1865, 1866 and 1867 list him as an artist of 227 George Street.
Unsolicited, Mr Chauncy applied to the Sydney Mechanics Institute and School of Arts in May 1866 for the commission to paint a portrait of the late Dr John Woolley for the institute, but the committee decided in favour of the Scottish portraitist W.M. Tweedie. In January 1868 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that he had painted a transparency of 14 × 10 feet (4.2 × 3 m) for E. Pugh’s tailor’s shop in George Street to celebrate the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. It depicted 'Neptune in a chariot, the picture enclosed in an ornamental border of scroll work and flags’.
In 1868 Auschar Chauncy moved to Queensland, perhaps prompted by his brother Hugh S. Chauncy, a mining surveyor and sharebroker working at Gympie. He painted a portrait of Governor Blackall soon after arriving at Brisbane, where he maintained various studios from 1869 to about 1876. As well as offering to paint portraits in oils, he advertised his competence in picture cleaning and restoration and in teaching languages. He travelled around Queensland to find work; in February 1870 he announced (inaccurately as it turned out) that he was leaving Brisbane due to lack of encouragement. In January 1873 he visited Rockhampton, where he advertised as a portrait painter and teacher of oil painting.
Also a landscape painter, Chauncy held a 'grand art union’ of his landscapes at Brisbane in May 1874, then showed unsold work at the Brisbane School of Arts Exhibition in November. He had settled in Gympie by mid 1876 when he exhibited an oil painting of the Lady Mary Mine from his studio in the Freemason’s Hotel. He died there of a heart attack on 30 April 1877.
According to a local report of his death, Chauncy had been 'well known in Gympie, having obtained considerable celebrity as a portrait and landscape painter’. However he was also said to have died 'unwept and neglected’ and presumably in poverty. No extant original works are known, although an undated oil, Sydney from Dawes Point (Mitchell Library), a copy of the frontispiece of James Atkinson’s Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales (London 1826) signed 'Chauncy’, is possibly his.
- Writers:
- McKay, Judith
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
