Thomas Watling b. 1762

Also known as Thomas Watlin
  • Artist (Painter)
Painter, author and convict from Dumfries, Scotland, Watling was transported to Sydney in 1792. Most of Watling's work are of natural history subjects but there are also many sensitive portraits of Aboriginal figures and a few landscape views, which serve as invaluable records of early colonial life.

Citations

  • Watling, T. (c.1794), 'Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay to his Aunt in Dumfries’, Penrith, Scotland, (reprint, Sydney 1945).

  • Smith, B. (1960), 'European Vision and the South Pacific 1768 1850’, Melbourne, Victoria (with A. Wheeler, eds), (2nd edn, Yale, 1986).

  • Gladstone, H. (1933), 'Thomas Watling, Limner of Dumfries’, Dumfries, Scotland, and/or Transactions of the Dumfriessshire and Galloway Natural History Antiquarian Society 1938, 76 pp.

  • Thomas, D., North, I., & McCarthy F. (1972), 'The Australian Landscape’.

  • Rienits, R. (1968), 'Thomas Watling’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 2, ed. D. Pike, A. Shaw, M. Clark, B. Nairn, G. Serle and R. Ward, Melbourne, Victoria.

  • Bull, G. (1987), 'The artistic background: The development of topographic painting’, First Views of Sydney 1788 1825, ed. T. McCormick, Sydney, New South Wales.

  • Dixson, W. (1923), 'Some early pictures of Sydney’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 9.

  • Rienits, R. and Rienits, T. (1963), 'Early Artists of Australia’, Sydney, New South Wales.

  • Sayers, A. (1989), 'Drawing in Australia’, Canberra, ACT.

  • (1988), 'The Art of the First Fleet’, Melbourne, Victoria.

Initial data sources

  • The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870