muralist, monumental carver and stonemason, emigrated with his younger brother, also a stonemason, from their home town of Bath to Moreton Bay in 1856. A chronic rheumatic, Sealy was apparently a refugee from the English weather. By 1859 he was working in the Sydney area and had carved the monument to Dean Coffy which survives in St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Parramatta. During the 1860s he worked in the Goulburn district designing and carving headstones, sometimes in association with the local monumental mason Robert Larcombe.
Thomas drank heavily and local oral tradition holds that he paid his bills by painting murals. Murals in William White’s house, Pejar, and in two hotels at Taralga, Lyman’s and the former Commercial, are believed to be his work. Only the last survive, in a dilapidated condition. They depict rather naive sporting scenes in extensive landscape settings; one shows a cricket match and the other a regatta on a harbour like Port Jackson. Thomas Sealy was living at Bannaby near Taralga when his brother died in 1880. He was still alive in 1885, the date on the last headstone known to have been carved by him.
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- Writers:
- Kerr, James Semple
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
