sketcher, sign-writer and architect, initialled a charming rural watercolour scene of early Melbourne, Collins Street East (1841, Dixson Galleries), depicting a settler – presumably Russell – his wife and their two children outside their solid farmhouse greeting two young hunters. Having abandoned farming and returned to England C.J.W. Russell, an architect of Ipswich, Suffolk, showed Chapel Viaduct on the Colchester and Stour Valley Railway at the Royal Academy in 1848. Then the gold rush brought him back to Victoria, where he recorded some of the shops and shopkeepers at the Bendigo diggings. His watercolour sketches include Butcher’s Gully, August 22, 1853 and Mr. H. Hinge, Blacksmith’s Shop, Bendigo, Sept.5 1853 (both La Trobe Library [LT]). London Store and Coffee House, F. Talbot, Sept.4 1853 (LT) has a tent in the background of the painting bearing the sign 'Russell – sign, inscription & ornamental writer’ and Russell in the foreground engaged in sketching two customers.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
