Edwin Bode b. 1859

  • Artist (Photographer),
  • Artist (Painter)
Edwin Bode was a painter and photographer who travelled throughout Queensland painting watercolours of homesteads in exchange for board and lodging. A longtime resident of Canungra, on his death in 1926 the town's residents paid for his sandstone tombstone, which featured a palette and brushes and was inscribed 'Erected by the many friends and admirers of our natural artist, E. Bode, in memory of his glorious work'

painter and photographer, was born in Birmingham, England. He spent his formative years in Suffolk, where he became a great admirer of John Constable’s art. He came to Australia in the Firth of Clyde because of a chronic chest complaint, arriving in Queensland in 1882. Initially he worked at various jobs, including being employed at the Ipswich lime pits and at the Butley sawmills at Coomera as a saw sharpener. With the money earned, he purchased 160 acres on Maybury Creek adjoining the Coomera River beside the Gorge Road to Canungra, planted a citrus orchard, including 300 orange trees whose fruit he sold in Brisbane (largely unprofitably because of costs of packing and transport), and built a modest house 'Maybury’ (the property was also known as Bodesville at various times). Bode brought out an oil painting from England, Close Friends and My Home Road , which stood unframed on an easel in his house for many years; when the Walker family purchased Maybury from Bode it was the only object that remained in the house. It now resides in the replica of Bode’s Hut in Canungra after being rescued from a fire in 1900 by the Walkers.

Bode moved to Canungra in 1886 where he lived in a small hut opposite the cemetery. He travelled throughout the agrarian hinterland, working on properties in the Canungra, Wonglepong and Mt Tamborine regions, doing odd jobs and often offering exquisitely detailed watercolours of homestead or farm in return for food and board. For a time he lived in one of the small huts erected for workers at the Canungra sawmill owned by the Lahey family ( Vida Lahey apparently spent some time in the district painting too). He and a number of unmarried mill hands called themselves 'The Baches’ and spent evenings together at the Canungra School of Arts hall enjoying concerts and dances.

Bode abandoned oils in Queensland and worked exclusively in watercolours, becoming 'one of the finest artists to document early pastoral scenes of the Gold Coast’ (Adlington). Many of his paintings are still with descendants of the families who first acquired them ( Gold Coast Bulletin 20 January 1979: cited Adlington). They include At Canungra 1886 (Gold Coast City Art Gallery Collection, purchased 1995, ill. Adlington, p.6); Valley of Nerang from Mt Roberts 1923 (Gold Coast City Art Gallery [GCCAG], purchased 1992: ill. Adlington, p.11); Homestead Crossing, Commera River 1919 (private collection); Upper Coomera Wharf 1889 (Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia); Numinbah Falls 1907 (GCCAG, purchased 1992: ill Adlington p.19); Orbust Farm (Nerang Side of Carrara) 1888 (Local Studies Library, Gold Coast City Council); and – one of his largest and most impressive works – Lower Falls Guanaba, Tamborine (Fall Said to be 180 feet) 1898 (GCCAG, purchased 2000: ill. Adlington, p.10). His earliest known Queensland paintings are Phillpott’s Pinnacle on the Nerang and a View of the Cobb and Co. coach at the Coomera ferry , both painted in 1884.

In the early 1900s Bode travelled to Sydney, where he painted a number of harbour views. Then he returned to Canungra and continued his prolific records of that region. In 1913 he began to experiment with photography, developing his own films and using some of the resulting landscapes, predominantly of the Canungra region, as references for his paintings. An anonymous memorial, 'To the Memory of a Great Artist’, published in the Daily Standard on Monday, 18 June 1928, noted that he was a member of the working class long associated with the Labor Movement. Mr J.W Cowie stated at his memorial service that Bode had still been painting in the final days of his life. He died at Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island in 1926 and his body was returned to the Wonglepong cemetery, Canungra, for internment. His tombstone carved in sandstone with artist’s palette and brushes was funded by Canungra residents and friends is inscribed: 'Erected by the many friends and admirers of our natural artist, E. Bode, in memory of his glorious work’.

Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011