sketcher, bank manager and Church of England clergyman, was born in Adelaide on 2 October 1841, son of John Pitcher and Deborah, née Watts. In 1859 he had two drawings, Morning and Clytie , shown at the third annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. The latter, copied from a bust, was the only entry in the category of best drawing from the round so Pitcher was reluctantly awarded the Hon. Charles Davies’s prize of 3 guineas, the donor announcing in the press that he considered the artist had 'no natural taste or genius whatever, the more especially when his advanced age is considered’. In reply Pitcher sent an angry letter to the Adelaide Observer declining the prize: 'I consider the remarks advanced as to my artistic abilities and natural genius to be uncalled for and indelicate, more especially as I do not aspire to any eminence in the art … I scorn to receive ill-earned honours’. A subsequent correspondent, also objecting to Davies’s intemperate outburst, clarified Pitcher’s age, the youth then being about eighteen – old for a student but hardly senile.
The controversy apparently destroyed Pitcher’s artistic aspirations. He became a bank manager, then was ordained and served as incumbent of the Anglican parishes of Kapunda, Adelaide, Clare and elsewhere. On 7 November 1867 he married Elizabeth Charlotte Catherine Smyth-Blood in Kapunda; they had three children. He died at Adelaide on 27 September 1900.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
