watercolour painter, was an itinerant artist who travelled around New South Wales in the 1860s painting homesteads and views – a 'gentleman swaggie’, recollected a descendant of one of his clients. In about 1863 he was at Henry and Harriette Wallace’s property, Eunonyhareenyha, Wagga Wagga, where he produced a set of three watercolour and gouache views. One shows the homestead with Harriette Wallace and her daughter Mary Louise in the foreground; the second is a distant view of the house, set above the Murrumbidgee River where members of the family are fishing and rowing; and the third depicts the outbuildings and the Oura Road on the northern side of the property along which a swagman (doubtless Grindell himself) is trudging. Signed 'R. Grindell pinx’, all remain with the family for whom they were painted. The artist may have been a son of James Grindell, who was in New Zealand from the 1840s successively working as explorer, settler, hotel proprietor and government interpreter (from 1848) and editing the Maori, the newspaper at Hawke’s Bay. A watercolour of the Maori meeting house at Arawata (Palmerston North Public Library) is said to be by James Grindell.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
