painter, was living at Dunolly near Ballarat, Victoria, in 1866 when three of his 'large Framed Chalk (French Crayon) Drawings’ (i.e. pastels) were on view at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. All were biblical subjects copied from well-known European paintings (presumably in the form of engravings): 'The Nativity’ after Correggio , 'Abraham and Hagar’ [after] Adrian Van der Werff and 'Magdalena’, after Girolano Batoni . Since all were exhibited by the Dunolly Borough Council, they presumably decorated the Town Hall. Sayer himself showed only drawings by other artists, but he included five of his own works in the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition: Ophelia (after Arthur Hughes), Words of Comfort , Sanquhar , Ellesland and The Nativity . Again all seem to have been copies.
Sayer drew some, possibly all, of the plates for Rev. J.J. Halley’s Monograph of the Psittacidae, or Parrot Family of Australia , published in 1871 'by the author and the Artist, Ballarat’ and, according to the imprint, at Melbourne, Launceston, Hobart Town, Adelaide and London (one incomplete first part alone is known, ML). The printers were Hamel & Ferguson and one of its three known plates, all after Sayer, was put on the stone by R. Laishley . These strongly coloured, unconventional parrots are more 'artistic’ than scientific in presentation, especially Plyctolophus galeritus. Great Sulphur Crested Cockatoo perched in front of a red tasselled curtain with a glimpse of a drawing-room beyond.
It is unlikely that Sayer had had any substantial art training at this time. He called himself 'an amateur’ when he exhibited a pastel drawing with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1875 (for which he won a certificate of merit). The following year he enrolled in the academy’s painting school under Guilio Anivetti (1850-81) while employed at the Sydney Treasury. He won the competition for the design of the National Shipwreck Society Medal in 1878 when living in Newcastle; he was still there when (reported as 'William W. Sayers’) he designed the floral wreath on the obverse of the Sydney International Exhibition Medal in 1879, the face having been designed by S. Begg. J.W. Sayer’s 'crayon’ (pastel) drawing of Ajax, copied from a plaster cast, was included in both the Sydney and Melbourne International exhibitions in 1879-80.
From then on Sayer’s career as a painter and illustrator was more orthodox. He was treasurer, then secretary, of the Art Society of New South Wales in 1883-87 and his work was regularly shown in its annual exhibitions; 'a lot of good work’ from him in 1883 included flower paintings, colonial views and Hume and Hovell Crossing the Murrumbidgee, 1824 . He specialised in atmospheric plein air paintings, mostly oils. Reviewing the society’s 1884 exhibition, the Sydney Morning Herald commented that Sayer’s At the Foot of the Falls, Katoomba 'looks as if it had been painted direct from nature’. One of his landscapes shown the following year, The Two Trees, Paterson River , was considered 'scarcely as fine and bold as it used to be’; however, the tone, colouring and atmosphere were again commended. Holiday Sketch, an Ocean View near Newport , shown in 1886, was judged 'bright and sparkling with sunshine’; New Railway Terminus, Kiama was thought 'by far the best’ of his 1887 exhibits.
As well as painting in oils, Sayer illuminated addresses. That presented to Lord Carrington, Governor of New South Wales, in April 1886 was described in detail in the Herald . Its three pages were ornamented mainly with native flowers and miniature views of local beauty spots (Katoomba, Pittwater, Sydney Harbour), coats of arms and other associational images as well as a view of an artist’s studio as a tribute to Carrington’s interest in the arts.
In 1888 Sayer was back in Victoria as the Geelong manager of the London Chartered Bank of Australia (which perhaps explains his apparently peripatetic career) although still exhibiting with the Sydney Academy. His Corio Bay – A Winter Evening was commended for its atmosphere and 'marked feeling of evening effect’ on 19 September. In 1886 he chaired the meeting of the Geelong Progress League which founded the Geelong Art Gallery, to which he presented an oil painting in 1902, The Cowrie Pool Torquay – his only known painting in a public collection. He died in 1914 and was buried in Geelong Cemetery. 'His merits are modest but enduring’, stated the Herald in 1887, but today his paintings are little known and rarely seen on the art market; Mountain Lake (an oil) sold in 1977 for $380.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
