portrait painter and religious instructor, came from Ireland in the 1830s to be catechist at Point Puer, the outpost for convict boys at the Port Arthur penal settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, Van Diemen’s Land. He served briefly as superintendent of Point Puer from mid 1834 until he resigned in 1835, having found the work too much for him. He returned to Hobart Town, where he died, aged 23, on 8 April 1836.
Armstrong’s artistic activities are known only from entries in the 1834 diary of his friend, Thomas James Lempriere , another junior official at Port Arthur, who noted in July that Armstrong had sent him his copy of a Van Dyck portrait to copy and that after completing this he and Armstrong began painting each other’s portraits. The present location of either effort is not known but both were presumably in oils, the medium Lempriere was using at the time.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
