During the late 1880s, 90s and early years of the twentieth century, Samuel Edmonds was employed as the manager of the Creswick branch of the Bank of Australasia. During his residency in the town he was also a keen landscape painter. During the 1880s he befriended the young local artist Percy Lindsay and despite the differences in their ages they became painting companions. Percy’s younger brother, Daryl Lindsay, described Edmonds in his memoir ( The Leafy Tree, p 33):
'Sambo’ Edmonds, the manager of the Bank of Australasia, was another bachelor who gave select dinner parties for four – never more than four – and occasionally afternoon parties in his garden for the children of his friends. He dressed in English tweeds, and having something wrong with one eye, wore a monocle to disguise it. His hobby was painting , and with some help from Percy, he did creditable little oil paintings. After his retirement, years later, I went to see him in Kooyong Road where he lived with a sedate white-capped old housekeeper. At the disposal sale of his effects after he died, I purchased a Georgian decanter and some rummers, and all his old paint brushes which had been kept in perfect condition – some of them I use to this day .
Edmonds was a steady influence on Percy Lindsay and seems to have acted as an early career mentor. Norman Lindsay also mentioned Edmonds in his autobiography, My Mask (pp 28-29):
There was a middle-aged bank manager in Creswick named Edmonds who practised landscape painting as a hobby, and who sometimes had painters from Melbourne staying with him. Walter Withers was one, and a watercolourist named Miller Marshall.
This comment tells us that Edmonds seems to be responsible for inviting the artists Walter Withers and John Miller Marshall to teach in Creswick during January 1893. The Withers/Marshall summer residency saw Percy Lindsay advance his plein air oil technique, while younger brother Lionel Lindsay experimented with watercolour. This early art training soon inspired Lionel to become a professional illustrator in Melbourne.
There are no Australian birth records for Edmonds so he possibly arrived as a British migrant. After moving to Melbourne c.1905 he exhibited several works at some of the Victorian Artists’ Society annual exhibitions. Daryl’s coment about the condition of his brushes after his death suggests that he continued to paint up to the 1920s.
- Writers:
- Clifford-Smith, Silas
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
