marine watercolourist, musician and surveyor, was born in Kent and trained as a royal engineer. His coloured lithograph, Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company’s Screw Steamship City of Hobart … Passing Gravesend on her Trial Trip, February 23rd 1854, published by the London firm of Day & Son, is an early indication of his lifelong enthusiasm for marine subjects and a possible sign of interest in the antipodes. The following year he came to South Australia to work as a surveyor. In 1857 he exhibited a 'sea piece’ at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. His watercolour Waiting for the Pilot (which the Register called 'this beautiful specimen of colonial skill’) was awarded first prize at the society’s second exhibition in 1858, despite strong competition from the second place-getter, Thomas Clark's oil Waterfall at Glen Stuart. Deering’s painting depicted the Port Adelaide steam-tug and its lighter.
Deering worked as a surveyor for the New South Wales government from 1860 to 1896. When his view of The 'Sappho’ rounding St. Catherine’s Head, Isle of Wight was shown in the New South Wales annexe at the 1871 London International Exhibition, he was catalogued as 'Government Surveyor, Sydney’. Catalogued as an amateur painter from Victoria (apparently by mistake) at the 1872 exhibition of the New South Wales Academy of Art, he showed three 'pretty little’ watercolours: The Deal Pilot, A Misty Morn ('a gem’) and A Falling Glass, Yarmouth Roads. He was described as a resident of New South Wales at the 1873 and 1875 exhibitions, by which time he was living in Ashfield.
The Channel Pilot, shown with the academy in 1873, won a prize of £25 for the best watercolour in the exhibition. In 1874 he won the John Campbell prize for best watercolour in the Agricultural Society’s annual show. The following year, After the Battle (ML), a watercolour depicting 'a large Spanish ship after engagement – taken and damaged by a British ship… [which] rides heavily in the midst of a stormy sea’, won a prize at the Intercolonial Exhibition held by the Agricultural Society and the silver medal for amateurs at the Academy of Art’s exhibition in April, although Deering declined the latter since the painting had been entered non-competitively, having previously been exhibited. The following year he again took the first prize from the Agricultural Society, 'for a pretty little sea piece, in water-colours – a line of work which he specially affects’. Two of his watercolours were shown in the NSW court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition: Life-Boat off the Goodwins and The Prize. By then he was living at Homebush (Five Dock). He died there on 14 February 1923, survived by his wife (née Edwards). His obituary noted that he was a talented musician as well as marine painter.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
