watercolourist, sketcher, etcher and teacher, signed three pencil drawings of Newcastle, NSW (DG. SLNSW) 'J.M. Oldham’. Two are dated February 1861, Patent Slip and Carpenters’ Yard, Newcastle N.S.W. and A Peep at the 'Bush’: 'Hunter River’ from the Obelisk above the Town of Newcastle, N.S. Wales . Dated January 1861 and less finely detailed than the others, with an over-sized reclining man in the foreground, is J.M. Oldham’s Lighthouse and Signal Station 'Newcastle N.S.W.’ As Seen from the Hill above the Town . All suggest a competent, trained artist.
The Englishman James Oldham was employed as a teacher at the Wesleyan School, Ballarat, Victoria, in 1862. He showed four works in the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition: a watercolour portrait, a drawing called La Surprise , and two animal genre drawings after Landseer – Dignity and Impudence and The Shepherd’s Grave (i.e. The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner ). Although all but the first were obviously copies, the Landseer 'drawings’ may have been etchings. According to the etcher Victor Cobb , Oldham was a friend of the eminent London printmakers Seymour Haden and Robert Hamerton, had 'a fine taste in things artistic’ and produced a number of etchings, mainly landscapes. Christchurch, Ballarat 1875 and Fellmonger’s Bridge Ballarat (n.d.) are in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
