Design and Art Australia Online

painter, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and politician, was born in King William Street, Adelaide in February 1848. In the early 1850s he and his family moved to Victoria; he was educated at Geelong National Grammar School. He returned to South Australia in 1868 and joined the literary staff of the Adelaide Register in 1875-80, where he was drama critic. He assisted in the Shakespearean revival at Adelaide’s Theatre Royal. In 1880 he became proprietor and editor of Adelaide Punch and often contributed comic and satiric drawings to it. His black and white sketches were highly regarded and he was considered a keen judge of pictures. Johnson also did naïve paintings in South Australia. His Euchre in the Bush (oil on canvas 43.2 × 63.7 cm, signed lower left with title inscribed lower centre) was included in Australian Colonial Art (Melbourne: Deutscher Fine Art Gallery 1980, cat.63), purchased by the BFAG and included in the Australian Regional Galleries’ official bicentennial exhibition The Face of Australia (1988), where it was dated c.1875. He exhibited paintings, drawings and cartoons in the SA Court at the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition (Class 2, various paintings and drawings p.526, cartoons, etc).

Johnson was especially keen on promoting viticulture and mining interests in SA. He published numerous works on the latter subject, including On the Wallaby, or Tales from the Men’s Hut . In 1880 he rode to the Mount Browne Diggings, resulting in Moses and Me and To Mount Browne and Back . In 1884 he entered Parliament as Member for Onkaparinga and became Minister for Education in 1887-89. In London in 1895 he presented his collection of gold nuggets to the British Museum, and to Queen Victoria who gave him a large and handsomely framed portrait. He purchased Charles Stuart’s Golden Autumn in London, which he presented to the SA National Gallery.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007