wood engraver, was convicted of forgery at Dublin in 1834 and, with his father Robert, sent to New South Wales. Technically free settlers (but unable to leave the colony), they arrived on board the Royal Admiral in 1835. Robert did little known work but Thomas became Sydney’s leading wood-engraver. Listed as working from 157 Elizabeth Street in Low’s Directory for 1844-45, Thomas produced illustrations for the Sydney journals Atlas (1846) and Heads of the People (1847-48). The title-page for volume 2 of the Atlas (1846) includes his architectural elevation of Sydney Post Office with tiny out-of-scale horses and carriages passing in front, while the title-page of the first issue of Heads of the People (15 May 1847) shows an artist contemplating a portrait on an easel, possibly that of the paper’s printer and proprietor William Baker, while smoking a hookah from which caricature heads arise.
In July 1847 the George Street manufacturer J.V. Lavers referred to Clayton as 'the most talented artist in woodcutting in this colony’ and commissioned him to design a new label for his blacking. This featured a view of the Lavers manufactory and a facsimile of the proprietor’s signature. In the late 1840s Clayton appears to have been the staff illustrator and wood-engraver on the Australian Sportsman.
Believed to have later worked in Melbourne.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
