Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, comic illustrator, caricaturist, painter, scene-painter, professional photographer, sailor, theatrical performer and entrepreneur, was born in West Medford, Massachusetts, on 7 October 1840, son of George A. Peirce, a merchant, and Jane, née Nye. Peirce sailed before the mast in the Oriental from New York in September 1859, jumping ship on reaching Port Phillip about the end of the year. Thus began more than 30 years of peripatetic adventuring in Australia, which he later recorded in his picaresque autobiography published posthumously in 1924. At first reading his book, which describes such unlikely career changes as scene-painter to snake-oil salesman and travelling photographer to riverboat captain, seems fantastic and hence unreliable; nevertheless, where Peirce’s information has been able to be verified it has proved basically correct, the major flaws being his idiosyncratic spelling of names and his faulty recall of dates.

Peirce spent very little time in Melbourne, leaving almost straight away for the Victorian goldfields where he tried a variety of jobs. His first recorded artistic attempt was a 'No Smoking’ sign for the Cobb & Co. stable at New Inglewood, he said; his second, a 26-foot (8 m) long canvas sign for the Dunolly Hotel. At the concert room in Ellis’s Hotel, Tarrengower, he 'made quite a success in [his] vaudeville act’ as well as painting two scenes: a garden and an interior. Later, at Dunolly, he 'managed to make a living by painting a few little pictures and assisting Frank Weston, an Alabama man, in hawking his famous “Wizard Oil”’. His undated watercolour, The Myers Creek Rush – near Sandhurst [Bendigo] Victoria (NLA) may have been one of these 'little pictures’.

Back at Melbourne, Peirce painted a picture of the Falls for the Niagara Hotel: 'I had not seen the falls, never having been out of Massachusetts before my sailing on the Oriental , and did not remember ever having seen a picture of them; but as Chisholm’s patrons were in the same boat, the view which I managed to produce was very satisfactory, and old Chisholm, when questioned, would lean across the bar and murmur, “Perfect picture, fellows; almost makes me homesick to look at it!”’ He also did caricatures of the Melbourne Meat Market identities (SLV).

Claiming to have had previous experience in photography with Lay & Hayward in Boston, Peirce joined the Melbourne firm of Batchelder & O’Neill , also hailing from Massachusetts. Peirce recalled in his memoirs: 'I worked for some weeks at their Melbourne studio under the supervision of Johnson [ Charles Johnson ], who later returned to his home in California to gain fame as a landscape painter; and I was then sent to Bendigo to a little branch studio run by the younger brother’, Benjamin Batchelder . At Bendigo he was instructed in scene-painting by John Fry at the Lyceum Theatre. As a result, 'my photographic duties were rather neglected, and Batchelder finally advised me to “move over to the theatre for good”, which advice I immediately followed.’ During his time at the Lyceum his progress and improvement in scene painting was so marked that for the production of the opera Norma he was 'allowed to produce the entire Stonehenge scene unaided’. He also worked at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, before becoming a partner in a travelling sideshow, hawking patent medicines. This venture, where he styled himself 'Gus B. Peirce, the great American Delineator and Serio-Comic Lecturer’, was unsuccessful. He subsequently joined the crew of the Otago , sailing to Dunedin, New Zealand.

On returning to Melbourne, Peirce rejoined Batchelder & O’Neill and was once again sent to Bendigo. In order to provide the firm with photographs for the forthcoming London International Exhibition he and a fellow-employee were sent on an excursion 'furnished with a little black push-cart holding the camera and other necessaries’. He illustrated this scene in his published memoirs (where he characteristically misspells the sign on the cart as 'Batcheler’), showing himself as the photographer leading the way while the 'other man’ pushes the cart. On the recommendation of Batchelder, he joined forces with Joseph Creelman in a project to photograph Victorian Aborigines; Peirce tells how initial fear of the camera was overcome when the 'old king’ looked through the lens and saw the Aboriginal women all standing on their heads. Although the whereabouts of the resulting photographs are unknown, Peirce also made sketches of Aboriginal life that are reproduced in his book.

He abandoned this project at Swan Hill, later writing that 'my first view of the Murrary [sic] River… made a great impression on me’ – so great, apparently, that he decided there and then to become a river pilot. To this end he travelled to Adelaide and took up temporary employment with the photographers Anson and Francis . In December 1862 he was reported as having 'executed several well-finished and developed pictures in water colours…taken in the first instance by the apparatus and then coloured’. Soon, on the recommendation of Arthur Blake (one more member of the network of ex-Bostonians upon whom Peirce seems to have relied for his early career in Australia), he was hired to chart the Murray from Albury to Goolwa. He proceeded to make his 1750-mile journey in a 15-foot boat, accompanied by an (unnamed) Aborigine and a 'dancing master named Everest’. Once the chart had been drawn up, Peirce was ordered 'to make a continuous copy in colours on tracing cloth. When completed some two months later, this first chart of the Murray River was nearly an eighth of a mile [200 m] long. It was wound on rollers and placed in a glass-faced box in the wheelhouse of the Lady Daly , to be reeled off as the steamer proceeded.’

In June 1864 Peirce became pilot of the Lady Daly but was laid off on half-pay in September. Once again he worked as a photographer in Adelaide, being employed by the photographer 'Durray’ (ie Townsend Duryea ) to whom, he said, he 'taught the art of making ambrotypes, then a novelty in Australia’. He remained at Duryea’s until May 1865 then was posted to the command of the recommissioned Lady Daly . For the next four years Peirce travelled the Murray-Darling river system as a steamboat-captain, first as master of the Lady Daly , subsequently of the Corowa and the Jane Eliza . During the 'off’ seasons when the river was low, he appeared on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne.

In September 1869 it was reported in the Albury press that 'Captain Gus Pearce [sic]... is engaged in a new branch of industry, namely, the painting of a series of views or pictures – the whole to form a grand panorama. It is just possible that the captain, if thoroughly going into it, might make the Murray as popular, with the aid of pictures, anecdotes, and songs, as the Mississippi was in the hands of Russell.’ But Peirce was planning nothing so parochial as a voyage down the Murray, painting instead A Voyage round the World , which began with a copy of William Frith’s The Railway Station (Paddington) and ended with a view of Collins Street, Melbourne. Peirce toured this 212 foot (64.6 m) canvas and two drop-scenes so successfully in Victoria during the summer of 1870-71 that he left the river to tour southern and central New South Wales.

On 3 June 1871 Peirce exhibited his panorama at the Royal Assembly Rooms, Bathurst. By this time it had grown (at least according to the advertisements) to 5000 feet and was accompanied by 'all the newest Mechanical, Pyrotechnical, and Dioramic Effects’. For the performance held on 7 June Peirce also 'performed several tricks of legerdemain, and treated those present to some ventriloquism’. Later that month he moved to the Prince of Wales Theatre and added a 'local picture’ to his show: 'a view of George-street, from Howard to Durham-street… the Club House Hotel and other buildings had been brought out by the artist with admirable distinctness’. For the performance on 24 June he promised that 'several “local celebrities” will appear in the foreground [of this scene], whose peculiarities are to be described in an original local song’.

In September he was engaged by a Mr Hamilton who had, somewhat unsuccessfully, started a series of paintings depicting the Franco-Prussian War. Peirce completed the panorama, which was advertised as portraying 'the principal battles and all the most stirring details of the deadliest strife the world has ever seen, covering 6000 feet [1828 m] of canvas’, and it was exhibited at the Prince of Wales until 21 October, then for three weeks in surrounding villages where it was 'received with unequivocal satisfaction’. It returned to Bathurst on 17 November (this time at the Royal Assembly Rooms) with two new scenes by Peirce: A Foraging Party and The Entry of the German Troops into Berlin .

Once again on his own, Peirce painted a series of pictures illustrating the writings of Artemus Ward. He exhibited these, together with his Voyage round the World , at the Bathurst Prince of Wales Theatre on 16 December 1871. In a jocular advertisement he claimed to have received 'a spiritualistic commission from Artemus himself, direct, to go in and make a fortune’; he advised 'Heads of Families [that] should any deaths occur in the crush to get in, a first-class undertaker will be in attendance’ and warned that although children would be admitted at half-price 'none over 12 stone [70 kg] will be considered infants’.

From Bathurst he travelled to Orange where he was forced to leave his paintings as security for his hotel bill. Later they were sent on to him uncovered, in the rain, and were ruined. In late 1872 Peirce painted a life-size portrait of the successful gold prospector Bernardt Holtermann, 'in his shirt-sleeves’ beside the giant nugget he discovered in the night of 19 20 October. Holtermann encouraged him to paint a new panorama, The Mirror of Australia , illustrating the life of miners, pastoralists and Aborigines, and provided him with a coach and horses for touring the surrounding countryside. Peirce spent the next few years travelling in the gold-mining regions of New South Wales.

Later he worked again as a riverboat captain, this time on the Murrumbidgee River. Later still he was a partner in an advertising business at Adelaide, where he provided occasional cartoons for the Lantern and for a short time assumed co-proprietorship of the Figaro . He and his partner extended their business to selling advertising space on railway stations around the country, expanding into Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. When the partnership was dissolved (all available advertising space having been sold) Peirce went to Geelong (Vic.). Here in 1879 he painted a panorama of Victoria, which he exhibited the following year. Tiring perhaps of his peregrinations, he settled in Geelong for the next ten years.

In 1891 Peirce purchased the Rose of Australia Hotel, Melbourne, part of the new Metropolitan Meat Market development. (His watercolour caricatures of Meat Market managers and employees are in the La Trobe Library.) His career as hotelier was short-lived, however; Melbourne’s depression forced the market and its associated properties, including the hotel, to close. Peirce’s wife died soon afterwards. He had met Agnes, daughter of John Carney, a miner, and Eliza, née Hall, at Rutherglen during his Murray River captaincy and they had married at Moama on 19 November 1869. Due to the vagaries of his career, they had spent much of their early married life apart, but she and the children joined him at Bathurst in 1872 and afterwards accompanied him on tour with The Mirror of Australia in Holtermann’s van. Following her death, Peirce returned to the United States and began to write his memoirs. Written for the American market, the resulting text was as sensational as any work of fiction and the author’s exploits were exaggerated to heroic proportions. Peirce died in 1919. His posthumous publication is peppered with his drawings of Australian scenes and incidents, e.g. photographing the Aborigines (ill. DAA) cf Gordon Bennett 's version (ill. Paul Fox article). A favourite subject seems to have been himself – a tall man, with a fine handlebar moustache.

Writers:

Callaway, Anita

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989