Design and Art Australia Online

painter, calligrapher and teacher, came to Van Diemen’s Land from North America and set up a studio in rooms over Kent’s tobacco shop in Murray Street, Hobart Town, advertising in 1853 that he was 'prepared to execute orders for likenesses in water-colours and crayons’. The following year he added writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping and drawing classes to his accomplishments. His artistic abilities were commended to the public in the Colonial Times of 9 June 1853, but the painting side of the venture does not seem to have been a great success. In September 1854 he re-opened in Barrack Street where, although requesting commissions for work 'in Water Colours and French Crayons’, he was primarily operating evening classes in the more practical arts of 'Plain and Ornamental Writing, Arithmetic, Book Keeping & Drawing’, claiming to have been for five years 'Premium Penman of America’.

Stacey apparently settled in South Australia in 1863. In October, after placing several notices in the local press and posting handbills around Adelaide, he gave a lecture at St Paul’s schoolroom on 'The History and Science of Writing, with Illustrations’; but the 'nominal charge’ of a shilling was not popular and the lecture had to be postponed because neither chairman nor audience turned up. In August Stacey had invited a reporter from the South Australian Register to his Adelaide studio in Currie Street to inspect a self-portrait done in a combination of watercolours and pastels. Its 'excellent effect’ was duly reported, and 'it was intimated to us that the visits of connoisseurs would be welcomed without formal introduction’. Entered in the South Australian Society of Arts’ annual exhibition that December his portrait was especially commended by the South Australian Register 's reviewer as 'possessing the depth of oil with the transparency of water-colour tintings, and the peculiar softness of chalk’. Minor examples of Stacey’s watercolours survive in an album containing work by S.T. Gill and other painters (Mitchell Library).

Stacey died of a heart attack on 12 January 1864, having collapsed while giving a private lesson in writing. He was buried in West Terrace Cemetery the following day. His obituary stated that he was a calligraphist who had recently arrived in the colony, 'a sober and steady man, of a very cheerful disposition’ who was earning a good living in South Australia. The last statement apparently arose from the misleading presence of a receipt for £100 among his effects, subsequently explained in a letter to the editor of the Register as merely a sample of the style of writing the son of the owner of the receipt was to be taught and in no way connected with Stacey’s income.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011