sketcher, lithographer and astronomer, was born in Dalry, Ayrshire, Scotland, on 31 October 1793, son of John Dunlop, a weaver, and Janet, née Boyle, a friend of the poet Robert Burns. Dunlop educated himself at night school in Beith after days working in a thread factory; he was building telescopes when he was seventeen. Later he met Thomas Brisbane and developed his interest in astronomy. Dunlop arrived at Sydney on 7 November 1821 as assistant astronomer to Brisbane, the new governor. Before setting sail for the colony he appears to have worked as a lithographer in London. In 1890 his family had in their possession a copy of Burns’s Caledonia , 'written and transferred to stone by James Dunlop, at R. Ackermann’s, no. 101 Strand, 27th March 1821’.
Brisbane imported a lithographic press from Ackermann’s as part of the equipment for the observatory in Sydney. When he left in November 1825 he gave it to Dunlop, who in turn had passed it on to Augustus Earle by August 1826. It is not known what lithographic art, if any, Dunlop may have printed in the interim. His official work for Brisbane does not seem to have included pictorial prints.
In 1827 Dunlop returned to Scotland to work with Brisbane in his private observatory at Makerstown. Four years later he was appointed superintendent of the Parramatta Observatory and returned to New South Wales, working there until August 1847 when, due to ill-health, he retired to his property on Brisbane Water (Gosford, NSW). He died, childless, on 22 September 1848, survived by his wife Jean, née Service, whom he had married in 1816.
As well as being an indefatigable astronomer, a poet, and a collector of geological, anthropological and natural history specimens, Dunlop clearly had some sketching ability. He made many astronomical drawings during his colonial years and Service stated: 'I knew also, from a few drawings of classical subjects bearing his signature, that he was a fair hand at a pen and ink sketch’. When Rev. J. McGarvie visited Dunlop at Parramatta in October 1826, the local Aborigines were invited into the house and, said McGarvie, Dunlop 'took the portraits of the blacks’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
