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painter, etcher and police magistrate, was born on 2 June 1831 at Knockiemil, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, son of John Panton and Alexina McKay, née Anderson. He developed an interest in drawing while a student at the Scottish Naval and Military Academy. Shipped to the colonies after coming down from Edinburgh University without a degree, Panton arrived at Sydney on board the Thomas Arbuthnot in March 1851, en route to Mangalore in the Port Phillip District – a property owned by his uncle, Colonel Joseph Anderson, where he stayed only briefly. Following a short, unsuccessful stint as a gold-miner, he was appointed assistant police commissioner at Kangaroo Gully near Sandhurst (Bendigo) in 1852. By 1854 he was senior commissioner. Although officially commended for his administration, William Howitt described Panton as 'a most inert young man’.

Panton was probably more interested in art. In 1854 he was president of the local committee which organised works for Bendigo’s Exhibition of the Industry of Sandhurst, a collection then sent to the Melbourne Exhibition in preparation for the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. In 1858, accompanied by his friend Hubert de Castella , Panton left Victoria to study painting in Paris. There he worked under the landscapist François Henri Nazon, a pupil of Gleyre and Delaroche. These art student days came to an end on 5 December 1860 when he married Eleanor Margaret, daughter of Colonel John Fulton of the Bengal Native Infantry, and they returned to Victoria. He was appointed warden and police magistrate for the Jamieson and Wood’s Point goldfields, and afterwards for Anderson’s Creek. While magistrate at Heidelberg he mapped the Yarra Valley. Panton Hill is named after him and Panton’s Gap, near Healesville, after a hut he owned there.

Panton was a keen explorer and travelled around much of Australia. He appears to have sketched wherever he went, some of his drawings being worked up into oil paintings (often many years later). Of his four paintings in the 1864 Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in Melbourne – three landscapes and a portrait of an Aboriginal woman – the Argus commented only on the last: 'Undoubtedly one of the two best portraits in the room is that of a native woman, from the brush of Mr. Panton, of Castlemaine’. The eight oil paintings he showed in the 1869 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition while serving there as police magistrate typify his range. There were a couple of portraits, Nannie, Lubra Melool Tribe, Swan Hill (shown again at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition) and Head of an Angel – the former likely to have been a repeat showing of his 1864 triumph and the latter dating back to his Paris student days. Most recorded views on his various excursions: Lal Lal Falls , Coast Scene near Frankston, Port Phillip Bay , On Badger Creek, Where the First Salmon Was Hatched (he was also a keen fisherman), Scene in Riverina , Sunrise, Menindie Lake and Mootwangee Gorge, Burke’s 47th Camp . The Geelong Advertiser was pleasantly surprised ('In our new police magistrate, Mr J.A. Panton, it appears we possess quite an artist’) and his paintings were judged 'such as to almost entitle Mr Panton to be placed on an equal [standing] with professionals’. Three were shown again at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition later in the year.

When Panton exhibited six paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts at Melbourne early in 1873 the Age reviewer was less impressed. The Disowned (a portrait of a 'half-caste child, covered with a variegated pocket handkerchief’) was said to lack life, Fern Forest, Glen Matta was thought 'hard and faulty in color’, a portrait of Governor La Trobe was 'characterised by extreme stiffness’ and views of Levuka (Fiji), Swampy Creek and Otway Forest (Vic.) were labelled 'hard’, 'crude’ and lacking knowledge of the laws of perspective. As a final insult his name was misspelt as Panter. Eleanor’s Glen , Bygnano Ranges, Albert district, New South Wales, and The London-Bridge Rock , shown with the Academy in 1875, were thought too florid in tints but praised for their excellent subjects and considered generally well-executed. He continued to be criticised for excessively bright colours.

Panton moved to Melbourne to live in 1874, having been appointed senior police magistrate. He remained in this position until he retired in 1907, aged seventy-five. During this period he served as a commissioner for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, was appointed a fellow of the London Royal Geographical Society and vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia. He was an active member of the Victorian Academy of Arts, of which he had been an inaugural council member in 1870, and continued to exhibit portraits, animal and landscape paintings at its exhibitions. He showed six paintings at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition (including Grampians, from Stawell , Foggy Morning, Eltham Road , and the inevitable 'Nanny’ [sic], a Lubra, Swan Hill Tribe ) and irregularly exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art. In 1886 he showed three oils in the London Colonial and Indian Exhibition: Condell’s Falls, Steamer on the Murray , Eagle Rock, Angahook , and Lake Corangamite . He was elected president of the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1888 and exhibited with it until 1892, the year he resigned as president. Declining a knighthood, he was awarded a CMG in 1895.

Early in his career Panton owned prize-winning vineyards at Bendigo. Later he took up land in outback New South Wales and in Western Australia, the latter reputedly inspired by the exploratory expeditions of his friend Ernest Giles. For a time, probably from the late 1890s, he lived in the Northern Territory and leased land in the Kimberleys, Western Australia. Panton died at St Kilda, Melbourne, on 25 October 1913, survived by two daughters. Alice Panton , a well-known portrait and landscape painter at the turn of the century, painted portraits of her father: Sketch at Night (c. 1900, LT) and an oil portrait as he appeared before she was born (Bendigo AG), obviously developed from an early drawing or photograph. Two portraits of him were commissioned from Frederick McCubbin : J.A. Panton Esq. P.M. (1904, o/c, 110.5 × 95.5 cm, NGV) and one for the Melbourne Club in 1913.

Twenty-four pencil and watercolour sketches are in the Dixson Galleries. Only one is signed, a pen-and-ink sketch of Aborigines and dogs at the water’s edge. Half the remainder, mainly watercolours, are of the South Sea Islands (Tonga, Samoa, etc.) – one is titled My House – and evidently relate to Panton’s 1873 exhibits. Surviving oil paintings include Cadell’s First Steamer on the Murray River (Bendigo AG) and First Government Residence, Melbourne, 1837 . The latter, painted in 1880 after a sketch (ML) by Phillip Parker King , depicts Melbourne as it appeared on the occasion of Governor Bourke’s visit in 1837. It shows 'Captain Hobson and Batman, with a Group of Natives. – Buckley and his Dog, same Group. – Governor Bourke’s Encampment of Tents, near the present intersection of Bourke and King Streets. – Governor Bourke (with umbrella), and Mr. Holden, Private Secretary. – Mount Macedon in the Distance.’ Panton also etched Commandant’s House Melbourne in 1886 from the King sketch (Deutscher Fine Art catalogue, Melbourne April-May 1980). His oil version was shown in the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition as after 'W. E.’ King. It sold at Christie’s on 24 September 1969 for $20 000, an enormous price at the time.

Panton became increasingly fond of converting early sketches into grand historicist oil paintings. Such memorials to white settlement and exploration were characteristic of the romanticising of the country’s 'founders and pioneers’ which occurred throughout Australia in the 1880s and early 1890s, particularly in Melbourne, by then the most urbanised city. The reverse process is also known. An ink and wash view of the Australian interior by William Strutt is annotated as having been taken 'from a clever painting by Mr. Panton…1851. Mr. Panton’s description is most valuable…the horizon he says is always lost in haze in interior, on hot days sky hazy very light…grey blended into sky '.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011