Design and Art Australia Online

painter, was born on 18 October 1833 at Sandgate, Kent, England, tenth child and youngest daughter of Commander Charles Tindal RN (1786-1859), governor of the Birmingham branch of the Bank of England, and Anne Sarah, née Grant. Mary’s brother Charles and his family had settled in the Clarence River district of New South Wales by 1851 and it was proposed that Mary should join them. However, in a letter to his father in October, Charles wrote: 'With respect to Mary she certainly cannot come out until we have a fixed home to offer her’. Six years later, in November 1857, Charles wrote to say: 'We shall have plenty of room for Mary. I have put up a wooden house, a temporary residence.’ The following March he advised her to bring out 'a filter and three or four dozen soda water to use on the voyage, also raspberry vinegar’. Mary reached Sydney on 10 November 1858 in The Light of the Age , accompanied by her second cousin Henry Montagu Methold. The following month the Tindals moved into the newly completed stone homestead on Ramornie, the centre of Charles Tindal’s successful cattle-breeding and canned meat manufacturing enterprises.

The Clarence River Historical Society holds sixteen small watercolours by Mary Tindal (on exhibition Schaeffer House, Grafton), all pages from a sketchbook. Seven dated 1862 depict various rural properties: John Shannon’s Glenreagh (a distant view with girls in the foreground, a river on the property with a female figure and some turkeys under the trees), Walker’s Newbold, Ogilvie’s Yulgilbar (the new castellated house in its landscaped setting) and Nymboida (the yard). Nine painted between 1860 and 1863 show Newbold, Ramornie and Geergarrow (Shannon). The Ramornie views are mainly of the homestead or outbuildings (one has Aboriginal workers outside) and, indeed, most of Mary’s views incorporate buildings.

She also made copies of views by her friend Rose Selwyn , wife of the Anglican bishop of Armidale and Grafton. Generally Tindal copied Mrs Selwyn’s views of the town of Grafton (one of her copies of its very modest main street of wooden buildings is labelled The Beautiful Street of Grafton ), while Selwyn copied Tindal’s homestead sketches. Tindal was somewhat the superior sketcher, but both had an informative precision and were equally interested in domestic details. Tindal’s drawings frequently focused on the homestead and family life (especially children) adding an intimate, informal note to what is otherwise undistinguished work.

Mary Tindal later returned to England and may have joined an Anglican sisterhood. She died on 9 June 1916 at Park Glen, Alexandra Road, Parkstone, Dorset. A carte-de-visite photograph of her taken in 1889 is at Schaeffer House.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011