wood-engraver, was born in London on 27 March 1825, youngest son of Ruth and James Winston (1773-1843), a wealthy comic actor and theatre manager. Winston trained as a wood-engraver under C. Whymper, presumably a connection of the eminent engraver Charles Whymper. Arriving at Adelaide from London in the Harpley on 16 January 1851, Winston seems to have worked in South Australia with Samuel Calvert . He engraved a perspective view of the Bank of Australasia in 1851 and possibly was employed by the architect Richard Lambeth to produce an engraving of his proposed Catholic Cathedral of St Francis Xavier, Adelaide. Some of his engravings were published in Goodhugh’s South Australian Almanac for 1852 .
By late 1852, however, Winston had set up business as a wood-engraver in Geelong, Victoria. His engravings appeared on theatre posters and as advertisements in the Geelong Directory for 1854 , in which his partnership with the drawing master Edward Sasse as 'Artists and engravers on wood’ at Bellerine Street was announced. They were particularly offering drawings and engravings for parties selling their property. The partnership had lapsed by 1859 when Winston had established a business in Neave’s Buildings, 42 Collins Street, East Melbourne. 'Winstone’ was catalogued as showing a 'Frame of Colonial Wood Engravings’ at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition from this address.
Winston moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, in about 1863 and set up as a wood-engraver in Princes Street South. He and Margaret Jane, youngest daughter of Francis Rashleigh, married there on 25 March 1864. They were back at Melbourne by 1868 and Winston was in business as a designer and engraver on wood at 41 Swanston Street. He advertised 'Designs for Posting Bills. Machinery and Architecture accurately Engraved. Estimates given for Illustrated Catalogues’ in the catalogue of the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition held before the London International Exhibition of 1873, and he exhibited proofs of his wood-engravings at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Many of his engravings, mostly of buildings after drawings by Albert Cooke , appeared in the Illustrated Australian News between 1868 and 1873.
In 1876 Winston was in Sydney, his engraving rooms being on the upper floor of the Town Hall Hotel. In March 1886, described as 'the well-known wood engraver, whose productions in all classes of work, including the best book illustration, have been circulating through various colonies for many years past’, Winston was invited to test the suitability of a variety of Australian timbers for wood-engraving. Choosing appropriately varied subjects—'flowers, foliage, birds, insects, beasts, human figures, machinery and other objects’—his cuts were judged bold and clear and in some cases the wood proved capable of taking comparatively fine work. The blocks and his proofs taken from them were forwarded to the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition.
Having remained an engraver on wood ('woodpecker’) all his life, Winston died on 5 January 1893, survived by his wife, their five sons and a daughter. He was buried in Balmain Cemetery.
