watercolourist (and cartoonist?), signed an attractive undated watercolour portrait of an unidentified surveyor seated in front of a map of Australia with a theodolite on a stand beside him (ML). The subject appears to be the young Charles Sturt , thirty-one years old in 1831 at about the time it would have been painted. A colonial portrait of an unidentified young man (p.c., Sydney) has been attributed to 'Benjamin Clayton’ by Eve Buscombe, and the otherwise unknown artist was possibly the Australian Benjamin Clayton (1805 54), a medical practitioner and the only son of the artist Samuel Clayton and his first wife, Jane Maguire. However, Dr Benjamin Clayton had an uncle and cousin of the same name in Dublin working as professional engravers (his cousin Benjamin also painting miniatures) in c.1834-41 and Sturt was in Britain in 1832-35. On the other hand, Benjamin Clayton studied medicine in Dublin from 1826 until he returned to Australia in April 1830 and may have had painting lessons from his relatives. Before undertaking his medical studies, Clayton had worked in Sydney and Windsor for several years with Dr T. Parmeter, a former convict employed on the medical staff of the Castle Hill Lunatic Asylum who advertised the forthcoming publication of his Letters to My Uncle Toby; or, a History of New South Wales in 1825, to be illustrated with 'a drawing of the Lighthouse and South Head, a view of St. James’s Church, Prisoners Barracks and Court-House, a view of Captain Piper’s marine villa and a view of Windsor Church and the surrounding scenery &c. &c.’. The subscribers included Samuel, 'Mr. Artist Clayton’, who could also have been its unnamed illustrator.
'B. Clayton’ has his name on the flyleaf of the sole known copy (LT) of a pseudonymous booklet of comic views and doggerel verse about a trip to the Victorian goldfields, The Diggins; Poetically & Pictorially Portrayed, from the Log-Book of Lubin Landsman, late of Limehouse, London (London, c.1852), which is attributed to him by the VSL. It consists of eight folding pages 12.5 × 10.5 cm, with hand-coloured illustrations which include the start of the voyage, seasickness, the trials of goldfields’ life, quitting and returning home after numerous discomforts:
What made me pass such wakeful nights,
And from Mosquitos get such bites,
What kept me in such constant frights?
The Diggins.
If this is Dr Benjamin Clayton the entire thing is fiction. Clayton married Frances Matilda (Fanny) Broughton, daughter of the late William Broughton of the Commissariat Department, in 1834. They settled at Baltinglass, near Gunning, where several children were born. Later he was in general practice at Windsor. He died at Balmain on 15 September 1854.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
