sketcher and medical practitioner, was son of the Dublin lawyer James Mackin, and Jane, née Turton. He graduated in medicine from Trinity College, Dublin, then was attracted to Victoria by the discovery of gold. He is known to have been on the Ballarat goldfields in the mid 1850s. One of his drawings, Diggers’ Hut, Buninyong dates from about 1855-56. Mackin was at Geelong by March 1856 when he presented his 'Report on the health and sanitary condition of the town and suburbs of Geelong’ to the corporation. He remained there for the rest of his life, for many years as medical attendant at Geelong Gaol. In the early 1860s he married Sarah Shaw, the sister of Thomas Shaw junior, pastoralist of Wooriwyrite Station, Western Victoria.
Mackin’s earliest dated work is Harris’s, Point Henry (December 1856). Such Geelong drawings of the late 1850s show a fondness for ramshackle and ruined colonial dwellings, a typical example being the pencil drawing of March 1857, Ruins of House of Early Settler, near Portarlington, Miss Drysdale’s . (Miss Drysdale was one of the few Victorian women pastoralists; she had had the architect Charles Laing design her a new residence in picturesque mode in 1849.) Mackin’s work of the 1860s can be characterised by the strong massing of buildings which dominate the centre of his compositions, the most striking being the tinted drawing On the Road to Portarlington (1868, Geelong Art Gallery), until the mid-1980s recently in its original frame by Thoms of Geelong. Other works include Benevolent Home for Aged Females (w/c, 1865) and South Geelong; December 1869 (pencil and wash).
Although Mackin’s obituary stated that he was of quiet disposition and took no active part in social or public matters, he did show eight works at the 1869 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition and eleven at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition held that same year. Titles include the picturesque subjects Jedburgh Abbey (w/c) and Martello Towers, near Dublin (w/c), At Battersea, Surrey (w/c), Old Buildings (w/c), Cathedral Scene (pencil), and the oriental Interior of a Turkish Mosque (chalk). These could imply that Mackin re-visited Britain and Ireland at some time in the 1860s, although they might have been developed from prints or photographs as all were popular subjects at the time. More suggestive, perhaps, is the fact that in 1880 he exhibited Mount Dunstan, New Zealand and Leaning Rock, New Zealand at the Geelong Juvenile Industries Exhibition.
- Writers:
- Fox, Paul
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
