watercolourist, teacher and architectural draughtsman, arrived at Hobart Town in the Esther on 7 April 1843. A fortnight later he advertised in the Hobart Town Courier as 'Professor of Landscape and Architectural Drawing, and the French and German Languages’. His watercolour View of Hobart Town, Taken from the Angle of the Catholic Burying Ground (private collection, Hobart), described in detail in the Colonial Times of 26 November 1844, was shown with his view of the exterior of the Pantheon at the 1845 Hobart Town Exhibition. The whereabouts of the latter is unknown, but the Tasmanian view is a large, competent and detailed work suggesting some professional training.
Cramer worked as an architectural draughtsman in Hobart; the design of Richard Lewis’s three-storey stone Georgian store on the corner of Argyle and Collins streets (now Red Cross House) was attributed to him with until C.F. Hunt, a pupil of Benjamin Wyatt, convincingly claimed in November 1846 that the design was his. Cramer had only been the draughtsman. When the Colonial Times reported the laying of the foundation stone in January 1845, it offered a third candidate, stating that the architect was 'the great Creator of the Universe’, His builders being identified as John Cleghorn and Francis Anderson. Cramer’s response is not recorded. He is thought to have left the colony in December 1846.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
