painter and house painter, was born in Altarnun, Cornwall, son of Richard Parnell Burnard and Elizabeth, née Westlake. He married Jane Chapman at Altarnun on 8 October 1822; they had four children. His wife and eldest son died in 1831 and the following year Robert married Eliza, née Stodden; they had ten children. The family came to South Australia in 1840 in the Java . They lived at Plympton, Adelaide, where Burnard worked as a house painter and painted still-life pictures.
Burnard must have been dead by 1847 (although Statton states that he died on 13 April 1876). When his painting Fruit was shown in Adelaide’s first colonial art exhibition in 1847 the South Australian Register identified him with the late Colonel Light , noting that their two paintings were 'not only beautiful in themselves, but to old colonists most valuable as relics of departed friends’. In this context departure was permanent. However, Robert Burnard’s eldest surviving son, another Robert Burnard , lived an apparently identical life to his father and continued to produce exactly the same sorts of paintings. Eliza Burnard outlived both, dying on 17 July 1886 at Bowden, South Australia. Her youngest son, Richard, lived until 1940.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
