sketcher, watercolourist and grazier, came to New South Wales in 1836 and took up land at Walcha. Boulton spent much of his time in Australia but later settled his family (he married twice and had 18 children) in Shropshire, England. He was said to have been more interested in art than in sheep-farming and made frequent excursions from his New South Wales property, Bergen-op-Zoom, to other parts of the country, recording these in pencil sketches and watercolour paintings, including such early works as South Head, Port Jackson , Point Piper 1836 and Cape Raoul, Tasmania (all 1836-37).
In the diary she kept from 1858 to 1861, Blanche Mitchell, daughter of Thomas Mitchell , wrote of the Boultons – close friends and neighbours in their Darling Point town house – and mentioned Mr Boulton’s talents as a painter, although she devoted most space to the lavish parties and other social events the Boultons hosted. Later the Boultons’ Sydney residence was The Rangers, Mosman, the Gothic Revival house built by Oswald Bloxsome senior , which Boulton depicted in a sepia and wash drawing. A watercolour dated 1881 is titled Sydney Harbour (across to Darling Point) from our own Garden 'The Rangers’ North Shore (NLA).
According to his obituary, Boulton studied painting in Europe during frequent visits there, his views of Como and the neighbourhood being 'due to his sojourn on the shores of Lake Maggiore at the house of his old friend, Sir George Macleay’. His Australian views are better known and were much admired in his lifetime. He was praised for 'the sombre, yet sunlit, effects of the characteristic Australian landscape and the accuracy of his colouring’ and examples were acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (a watercolour, Sydney from the North Shore , dated 1882) and the Australia Club. He joined the latter soon after it was founded in 1838.
Boulton showed six drawings in the New South Wales section of the 1862 London International Exhibition. During the 1870s he exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art, showing oil landscapes in 1874, an ink sketch of Lithgow Valley, Cottage Residence of T.S. Mort, Esq. in 1875, and Iceberg Seen from S.S. Northumberland, October, 1875 in 1877, among other works. In 1879 he showed four pictures at the Sydney International Exhibition, styling himself 'Associate of the Liverpool Society of Watercolour Artists’: Sunset at Aden (highly commended by the jury), Dover Castle and two views of the Nepean near Penrith. An extant sepia sketch of a bullock-team and a flock of sheep titled Resting is dated 1879 (p.c.). Near Bondi, N.S.W. – Winter , another watercolour, was exhibited at the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition from Sydney.
Boulton died at Bergen-op-Zoom in October 1895. At least two of his children also painted competent watercolours: Annie Jane , who exhibited On the Blue Mountains at the 1870 Intercolonial Exhibition, and Edith, who later married Cyril Ransome. Edith’s eldest son, Arthur, became a children’s novelist renowned for his Swallows and Amazons books, while her eldest daughter, Cecily, became a painter with her own studio in London.
