Design and Art Australia Online

portrait painter and miniaturist, came to Sydney in the early 1830s, being listed in Castlereagh Street in the New South Wales Calendar and General Post Office Directory for 1832. Confusion over 'J.B.’ and/or 'T.B.’ East has arisen from a post office directory misprint and difficulties in reading the signature on the few works known to be by him. 'T.B.’ East had the same Castlereagh Street address in 1833 as the previous year’s 'J.B.’ The English miniature painter J.B. East, who exhibited at the Royal Academy every year between 1818 and 1830 from various addresses in London, seems to be this artist. His last work exhibited at the Royal Academy was a portrait of A. Earl , possibly Augustus Earle , who had returned from his travels in Australia and the southern hemisphere in 1829.

While the destination of East’s voyage from India may have been partly inspired by hearing of Earle’s success as a portrait painter in New South Wales, he also had relatives in Sydney. On 15 May 1834 the Sydney Gazette praised 'a portrait in oil of our respectable fellow, Mr. Bodenham, the estate and land agent, drawn by that very clever artist, Mr. East of Sydney’, and continued: 'Mr. East came to this colony from Madras; he is the brother of Mrs. Learmonth of Sydney, and very much liked here’.

12 days later 'Mr. East, Portrait Painter’ informed his friends and the public that he had 'removed from Cummings’ Old Hotel, to Mrs. Reiby’s Houses in the same street, lately occupied by the Church and School Corporation’. Within two months a notice had appeared in the Sydney Monitor stating that he had left Macquarie Place and was now working from G.W. Evans 's bookshop in Bridge Street. ( Conrad Martens appears to have been the next tenant of this upstairs studio.) On 15 September 1834, the Sydney Herald noted: 'It is said that Mr. East, the portrait painter, is about to leave us for Europe in a short time. We hope that such is not the fact, as we cannot but look upon artists of Mr. E’s profession as an acquisition to the Colony’. Although he probably did leave in 1836 and may also have revisited India in the interim, East continued to be listed in Sydney Post Office directories until 1837.

Few extant works have been identified. He almost certainly executed a watercolour and pencil portrait of Sir James Dowling (1834, ML) originally catalogued as the work of 'J.B. Earl’ (the signature is unclear). His major known work is his oil on canvas portrait of Billy Blue (ML), showing the well-known Jamaican boatman (who died in May 1834) standing in front of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a rock formation on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour. Signed 'J.B. East. 183[4?]’, it was said at the time to have been drawn from life; the Australian declared that this 'beautifully executed portrait and admirable likeness, should be preserved by Government House’. Yet it did not sell, instead being raffled for £1 a share in April 1835. The proceeds doubtless helped finance East’s departure for India to which, according to his former pupil Samuel Elyard , East returned and where he died.

Two lively watercolours, Landing Horses from Australia [at Madras] and Catamarans and Masoolah Boat, Madras (DG), have been convincingly attributed to East on stylistic grounds when compared with a pair of aquatints by C. Hunt stated to be after East, Madras, Embarking and Madras, Landing , published in London in 1856 (India Office Library). Packed with incident and with gently comical figures of Europeans and Indians, they confirm the competence and human focus of East’s work, as well as suggesting some formal connection with the export of New South Wales horses ('Walers’) to India, for which painted records are known to have been commissioned.

Writers:

Bruce, Candice

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011