painter, sketcher and diarist, was the third child and eldest daughter of the fifteen children born to Marshall Waller Clifton, commissioner of the Western Australian Company, and Elinor, née Bell. The Clifton family lived at Capecure, France, and in London before emigrating to Western Australia aboard the Parkfield . They reached the company’s new settlement of Australind in March 1841.
From April 1840 until July 1841 Louisa Clifton kept a diary in which she described the journey to Australia, the settlement, her reaction to the local Aborigines and her occupations: domestic work, reading and sketching. On 1 June 1842 she married George Eliot, nephew of Lieutenant-Governor James Stirling and government resident for the Bunbury district; they had ten children. Louisa’s view of their cottage, Bury Hill, Bunbury , dated 14 July 1842 (RWAHS) records the first permanent house erected at Port Leschenault. In 1870 they moved to Geraldton when George was transferred. Louisa died there on 12 October 1880.
Modest sketches of the fledgling West Australian Company’s settlement and its environs drawn in about 1841, such as Tents Amongst the Trees, Australind (pencil), View of Mr Greensill’s Bush Cottage (pencil and w/c, p.c.), View of Leschenault Bay (pencil) and View of the Estuary at Australind (w/c), comprise the majority of Clifton’s surviving work. Best known is a hand-coloured lithograph by T.C. Dibdin after one of her drawings, A View of Koombanah Bay or Port Leschenault, Australind, Western Australia , published at London in the 1840s. This was reproduced in the centenary number of the Perth Western Mail in 1932 along with original drawings by Louisa and her sister Mary .
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
