Design and Art Australia Online

illuminator, ornamental penman, sign-writer, plasterer, soldier and deserter, apparently served an apprenticeship with his father, an Irish cloth merchant; he was later called a weaver by trade. British Army records give his place of birth as 'Kilmalone’ (possibly Kilmalin, Parish of Powerscourt, near Enniskerry), County Wicklow. On 11 October 1840 at Dublin, Edward enlisted in the 99th Regiment of Foot (Lanarkshire Volunteers) and left for England. The following year he was sent to Port Jackson as a guard on board one of the convict transports, probably the Somersetshire . He was first stationed at Newcastle (NSW), from which he deserted three times between October 1842 and October 1844. Then he was posted to Port Phillip (Victoria), where he apparently served on convict transport ships travelling mainly between Port Phillip and Van Diemen’s Land. At Port Phillip in 1846 Murphy again deserted. His personal service file has disappeared, but he appears to have served his nine months’ prison sentence in Sydney, after his release being stationed at Cockatoo Island for a month and at Goat Island for two months. On 25 July 1848, in the Scots Church, Sydney, Edward Murphy married Matilda Finch (1823-1900), a housemaid from Ballymore, Ireland. The following year they departed with the 99th Regiment for Hobart Town. Their first child, a daughter, was born there in September 1849.

It was apparently during an earlier stay in Hobart Town that Murphy began to make the elaborate pen, pencil and wash illuminations of flags and ships which are his distinctive contribution to Australian art. The earliest known example, dated 1844 (ML), features signal masts and references to the semaphore numbers (and meanings) of those at the Mulgrave Battery, Hobart Town. Flags of the world border the outer edges of the drawing in a half circle and there is a large representation of the brigantine Swordfish in the centre. Since Swordfish was not built in Hobart Town until 1850, it would appear that different sections of the work were finished over a long period.

For the next few years Murphy remained in Van Diemen’s Land, stationed at the Cascades Probation Station on the Tasman Peninsula (1852), in gaol at Port Arthur (November 1853-February 1854) after another desertion, then back to Hobart Town. During this period he drew another Tasmanian and British chart (1851, TMAG) and an undated Irish and Tasmanian one (TMAG). At least three charts made in 1855 survive (TMAG, Crowther Library and Maritime Museum, Hobart). An illumination for Richard Dry, former Speaker of the Tasmanian Parliament, was described in the Hobart Town Courier in 1855 (reprinted Illustrated Sydney News , 28 April): 'We have seen a piece of ornamental penmanship by Private Murphy of the 99[th] regiment, which, for the painstaking effort it must have commanded and its neatness of general design, is worthy of especial notice. Elegantly coloured and blazoned in gold and silver, it comprises on one large sheet of drawing paper representations of the various standards of the several empires and kingdoms of the world, the port flags, public and private signals used at Hobart Town, illustrated by several choice corner pieces well executed of nautical subjects. The manner of working the signals is illustrated by views of the semaphore and upwards of 300 diagrams exhibiting in detail the numbers as shown by the arms of the telegraph with a written code of reference for each signal. The whole is a remarkable example of what can be achieved by constant perseverance and application’.

In January 1856 Murphy’s regiment was ordered back to England. Proving surprisingly unwilling to return, he was allowed to transfer to the 12th Regiment and sent to Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula. Matilda Murphy and their three children accompanied him; she gave birth to another son there. He remained with the 12th until about 1856-57, then at last obtained his release from the army. An important artistic commission during this period was from Olaf H. Hedberg, a well-known Swedish merchant of Hobart Town, for whom Murphy drew a pen and pencil chart of the flags of all nations with the Swedish standard in the centre (LT). Another work was commissioned by W. Lewis, the signal officer at Port Hobart; it features the first three ships over the line in the 1857 Hobart Town Regatta (TMAG). This is Murphy’s latest identified work, although he continued to draw these charts throughout the period he lived in Tasmania.

The family moved to Launceston in 1858 and in 1862 Murphy exhibited a chart at the Criterion Hotel, described by the Launceston Examiner : 'On a framed card thirty inches long by twenty broad, are a pen-and-ink portrait of the Duke of Wellington, a brief sketch of his life, his coat of arms, titles, decorations, batons, &c., and three illustrations – the battles of Albuera and Vimiero and the siege of Badajoz. The portrait of the Duke is from memory, and is intended to represent him when about fifty years old. His decorations number twenty-five, belonging to all nations. There are eight field marshals’ batons, the Duke having been Fieldmarshal of eight nations – England, Hanover, Portugal, Spain, Netherland, Prussia, Austria and Russia … In the left corner of the tablet are one or two anecdotes of the battle of Waterloo, illustrating the Duke’s courage and steadfastness. In the opposite corner is a list of losses sustained by the British during the duke’s command in the Peninsular War’. It was shown at the Launceston Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition in 1879, by which time it was regarded as a really good 'specimen of what was once a popular art’. It had been most successfully raffled in 1862, with twenty tickets at 5s each, at which time Murphy was intending 'to write another tablet six foot [182 cm] long to include History &c. of the Duke of Wellington, and the Great Naval Commander Lord Nelson’. Obviously, the military content of his work did not diminish once he became a civilian. Presumably he had joined the army dreaming of martial glory, not to be sent off to the colonies to guard convicts.

Murphy and his family soon left Tasmania for more prosperous Melbourne and he established himself as a sign-writer at Emerald Hill (South Melbourne). Perhaps family pressures necessitated the move, as by this time Murphy had eight children to support, three others having died in infancy. He subsequently expanded his business to include plastering, taking out a patent in this connection for a bivalve ceiling ventilator he had invented. No Victorian illuminations are known. Murphy died, aged forty-nine, on 11 November 1871 and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery. His eldest son, Edward, carried on the plastering business.

Writers:

Schaffer, Irene

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011