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painter and art teacher, was probably a child of John and Mary Mundy baptised on 2 January (2 February according to the International Genealogical Index of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) 1798 in St Marylebone Parish Church. London. A report of his death in the Britannia (30 March 1848) stated that he had visited France, Italy and other continental countries to 'add a knowledge of the Masters to a sound artistic training’ (précis in Stilwell and von Oppeln). Mundy or Munday (both spellings were used although the former only by the artist) may have been the 'H. Mundy’ who exhibited an oil painting of Swiss peasants at the British Institution in 1831, his address being given in the catalogue as 12 Crawford Street, Portman Square. His earliest known surviving works are pencil sketches dating from the early 1820s, when he was still a student, owned by a Tasmanian descendant who has lived in England for many years. The most notable is a head of a young woman, the only work known by him to be signed. {It is unlikely that he was the London engraver and lithographer in the firm of Dean & Munday (sic) that lithographed Prize Ram and Ewe, Exhibited at Parramatta, October 1828, from the Electoral Saxon Flocks of Raby after a drawing by William Edward Riley, the other partner undoubtedly being one of the sons of Thomas Dean, proprietor of the well-known printing works in Threadneedle Street, London.}

Henry Mundy most likely arrived at Hobart Town as a steerage passenger in the Vibilia on 22 August 1831, having been engaged by Charles Richard Clark of London on behalf of Mr and Mrs George Carr Clark of Ellinthorp Hall, a private school for young ladies near Ross, to teach drawing, music and French after Benjamin Duterrau and his daughter Sarah Jane, who had been offered the positions in London, had not taken them up. While at the school Mundy composed quadrilles and waltzes, the scores of which were dedicated to his pupils. They were published in London in 1838-39 and sold in Hobart and Launceston. He was commissioned to paint the portrait of at least one of his former students, Mary Ann, daughter of William Effingham Lawrence, a prominent Launceston colonist (c.1840, private collection [p.c.]), and of her mother, Mrs Lawrence née Smither (La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria). Lavinia, eldest daughter of Major Thomas Daunt Lord of Okehampton, Spring Bay, whom Mundy married on 28 January 1834, had also been a pupil at the school. Portraits of his parents-in-law, evidently painted in the late 1830s (p.c.), which for many years hung at Entally, near Launceston, are his earliest known portraits.

Mundy left Ellinthorp Hall in the latter half of 1838 and settled in Launceston, where he established himself as a portrait and landscape painter. The business initially prospered. Although he never seems to have signed or dated his Tasmanian paintings and identified works rely largely on provenance and style, he is known to have painted oil portraits of several well-known residents of northern Tasmania. One fully authenticated surviving portrait is his portrait of James Denton Toosey of Richmond Hill, Cressy, an early benefactor of Christ College, Hobart, which used to hang in the college (now Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). Others include a lost portrait of Mrs Reiby (Richarda Allen), described by Ann (Clark) Weston in an 1839 letter to her sister as 'done to the life most splendidly dressed in black velvet, blond lace and pearls’; and extant portraits of Susanna Vivares Tabart (p.c.), merchant Thomas Williams (p.c.) and Thomas Archer of Woolmers, Longford (at Woolmers). A portrait of Thomas Archer’s eldest son, Thomas William Archer, also at Woolmers, is attributed to him. At the 1862 Launceston Exhibition Sir Richard Dry lent Mundy’s portrait of his father and Mr Weedon lent a portrait, neither of which has yet been convincingly identified.

Mundy painted landscapes as well as portraits, but no extant examples have been firmly identified. On 6 February 1840, the Launceston Advertiser mentioned four scenes of the Norfolk Plains area painted for W.P. Weston: 'One of them in particular attracted our notice, in which the artist’s skill must have been put to the test. The locality chosen for this subject was merely a post and rail fence, a little cultivated land, and the surrounding bush, with Ben Lomond in the distance; out of which, by the introduction of cattle, rustics etc., has been produced a beautiful, and at the same time faithful picture. A view of Longford from the residence of G.P. Ball, Esq., is also a most beautiful picture’. An unsigned oil painting (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery), although neither of the above, is possibly by him and he probably did other views. In October 1840 Lady Franklin wrote to Mundy inviting him to paint a picture of the Rossbank Observatory with Captain Ross, Captain Crozier and her husband Sir John (Governor of Van Diemen’s Land) in the foreground. She stated that she was proposing to exhibit the resulting work at the Royal Academy, London. Mundy replied that he was, unfortunately, in the middle of moving and so unable to accept the commission; instead, it was carried out by a Hobart Town artist (evidently Thomas Bock ). Mundy was removing his family to Seaford, near Okehampton, on the east coast of Tasmania. The census taken in January 1842 described him as head of its household of eighteen, including five convicts.

Yet in March 1842 Mundy was in Hobart Town advertising as a portrait and landscape painter and art teacher from Temple House. In April 1843 the local press reported that this 'justly celebrated’ artist had opened 'a school of Painting…in connection with the Mechanics’ Institute’. On 31 August 1844 he was offering special terms for portraits (£6 for a 'Head size’) and for drawing and music lessons (2 guineas a quarter) at his studio and residence, 51 Argyle Street, corner of Brisbane Street. He painted his brother-in-law Lieutenant Francis Aubin, aide-de-camp to Governor Arthur (Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum, Hobart), previously attributed to Robert Hawker Dowling . The painting by Mundy listed in James E. Bicheno 's posthumous sale of paintings at R.V. Hood 's Hobart Town gallery in 1851 was possibly Bicheno’s portrait. Portraits of Captain George Sinclair and Mrs Sinclair (p.c.) are attributed to him. His work was well regarded at this time. Two portraits exhibited in the upstairs dining room of the Victoria Tavern, opposite St David’s Church, in September 1844 were considered 'another proof of his excellent taste and professional ability, and especially in his development of light and shade of the drapery’. When his portrait of Thomas Harbottle (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts [ALMFA]), a local businessman, was shown at the 1846 Hobart Town Exhibition, the Colonial Times of 26 June had modest reservations but was generally complimentary: 'The likeness is not quite so good as the colouring, although both are excellent. Our fellow-townsman is rather too full in the face, but the man is there. We like Mr. Munday’s style, which is warm and vigorous’. He painted Mrs Harbottle (ALMFA) at the same time.

The severe economic depression of 1844 reduced Mundy’s clientele, and early in 1845 he retired to Seaford. By temperament unsuited to life in so isolated a community, he sank into alcoholism. During frequent visits to Hobart Town his embittered state and mental deterioration were observed with distress by his friends and it was no surprise when, on 24 March 1848, Mundy was found dead at the Ship Hotel, Hobart Town, having killed himself by drinking a tumbler-full of laudanum. The resulting inquest returned a verdict of death while in a state of temporary insanity.

Writers:

Stilwell, G. T.
Oppeln, Carolyn von

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011