painter, art teacher, gold-digger and settler, possibly began his colonial artistic career in South Australia. According to the Jensens, one 'E. Thompson’ – a common misspelling – was offering his services as drawing master at Mellor’s Academy, Waymouth Street, Adelaide, in December 1840. By the late 1840s, however, Thomson (again often spelt 'Thompson’ by the press) was working in the New England district of northern NSW. Landscape Australia (New England) by 'E. Thompson’ was included among the prizes offered by the Sydney art dealer James Grocott in his art union held in August 1848. Two unspecified landscapes and two views of New England by 'Thompson’ exhibited by the printer and stationer John Sands in the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition in 1849 were labelled 'hard, muddy and unnatural’ by the Sydney Morning Herald 's art critic.
Four views of NSW by Thomson were shown with the Royal Scottish Academy in 1851, including a View in New England – New South Wales lent by D. Anderson. It probably depicted Anderson’s former property, Moredun, since there are several Moredun views among the fifty-one watercolours in a surviving sketchbook (NLA) attributed to Thomson. With the exception of one drawing initialled E.T. all are unsigned, but most were drawn in the New England and Northern Rivers districts of NSW (two are night views of Sydney Heads and Broulee Heads). Included are Beardie Country from Ben Lomond , Clarence River near Ogilvie’s and homesteads such as Wellingrove and Salisbury Court , the latter with its bearded owner C. Marsh and his dog in the foreground. There are also sketches of local Aboriginal sites: Blacks’ Camp near Newton Boyd Station Clarence District (a property then owned by C.G. Tindal), and Black’s Grave near Pindari (with carved tree and burial mound). They show Thomson to have been a talented watercolourist of a picturesque disposition with an interest in capturing the distinctive tones of the Australian landscape. His preference for dull greens and browns explains the Herald critic’s pejorative 'muddy’.
In the early 1850s one Edward Thomson was accused by Edward Hammond Hargraves of being the chief initiator of the abortive goldrush to Canning Downs, Queensland, by peppering the area with gold and faking a large nugget from a lead bullet covered with gold leaf. Replying that he had indeed found small quantities of gold at Lord John’s Swamp, the Severn and in gullies leading into McIntyre’s Brook, Thomson refuted Hargraves’s allegations in an open letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald in September 1852 in which he complained that at Lord John’s Swamp he had 'swamped more time and money than I could well afford (artists in this colony are not proverbial for being overburdened with heavy purses)’. He admitted responsibility for the fake nugget – concocted, he claimed, as a 'trivial piece of tomfoolery’ apparently to hoax 'the great gold-finder’ himself – but denied Hargraves’s allegations that he had been supplied with gold dust to pepper holes at Canning Downs as a paid agent of the owner of the property George Leslie and other squatters in the district. His letter was signed 'Edward Thomson, An Artist, Warwick, Darling Downs’.
Many years later Thomson appears to have turned to oil painting. One Edward Thomson exhibited twelve oil landscapes of the New England district at Sydney’s Australian Subscription Library in March 1867, including views of Myall Creek, the Reef Ridge near Bingara, Boro Creek and Falls on the Gwydir River, Rocky Creek and Terry Hie Hie Mountain. All were for sale. A view of the Gwydir River between Koonganooran and Keera stations was judged the gem of the collection:
The scene represents the well wooded banks of a broad widening stream, the clear waters of which appear to be sparkling in the half intercepted sunlight… The trees on the right side of the river are admirable, and the long vista beyond them, up the course of the stream, is very beautifully painted.
Referring to View on the Reef Ridge near Bingera [ Bingara ], the critic mentioned the 'blending tints of a vast tract of rolling forest land’ – a characteristic of the earlier watercolour paintings – and it is likely that the two Edward Thomsons were one and the same, despite the fact that this one was reported to be 'an English landscape painter of no mean excellence … at present on a visit to these colonies’. With little reason to remind the newspapers, particularly the Herald , of any earlier presence in the colony, the statement is best read as (inconclusive) evidence that Thomson had returned to Britain in the long interval between exhibitions.
When showing seven oil and four watercolour paintings at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, Thomson appeared in another guise, as a resident of Gwydirdale included in the amateur artists’ section. His exhibits included Boro Creek , On the Gwydir, above Boro Creek and Myall Creek, near Mr Dangar’s (all oils), and On the Rocky Creek (w/c). Although his amateur status appears to have been unequivocally proclaimed, the Herald was unconvinced: 'Several pictures of river scenery, contributed by Mr Edward Thomson, Gwydirdale, show an extraordinary amount of talent – all the more wonderful if (as it is reported) they are the work of a self-taught artist in the wilds of the interior’. This Edward Thomson certainly had a different palette, the Herald stating that the colouring of the trees 'seems rather too bright for the foliage of an Australian forest’, while acknowledging that 'the painting is extremely clever’. At the Agricultural Society of NSW’s Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition of 1875 C.B. Cuttrise, Esq., lent On the Gwydir by 'The late E. Thomson’ along with other works from his collection to the non-competitive oil painting section of the show. Thomson had died in 1873.
An undated (1850s) watercolour of Baddersley Creek was listed as the work of John Thompson when shown in the Armidale and District Historical Society’s exhibition at the City Council Art Gallery in June-July 1967, yet medium, style and New England subject strongly suggest it too was Edward Thomson’s work.
- Writers:
- Lennon, Jane
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
