painter, lithographer and art teacher, was born at Aston Manor, Warwickshire, England on 22 October 1854, the son of Edwin Withers, roper, and his wife Sarah, née Welch. He studied in London at the Royal Academy Schools and South Kensington from 1870 to 1882. His father opposed his desire to be an artist, and sent him to the Colony of Victoria. After his arrival in Melbourne on 1 January 1883 he humped his bluey through country districts to get to know the bush and the lie of the land. By 1884 he was in Melbourne working as a draughtsman with William Inglis & Co. and Ferguson & Mitchell, lithographic printers. He was also attending G.F. Folingsby’s evening classes at the National Gallery School. In this period he began exhibiting drawings and paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts. His student activities and his membership of the Buonarotti Club led to enduring friendships with Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams.
In May 1887 he returned to England via Italy and Paris, and on 11 October 1887 he married Fanny Flinn, a painter and music teacher, at Handsworth-with-Soho, Staffordshire. They settled in Paris and he studied at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury. He befriended Australians living in Paris, including E. Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker and John Longstaff.
In 1888 Ferguson & Mitchell invited him to return to Melbourne in orderto illustrate with pen and ink Edmund Finn’s The Chronicles of Early Melbourne . The Withers travelled to Australia by way of Italy and arrived in Melbourne on 11 June 1888. At first they rented a cottage in Kew, where Withers established a studio. The following year, when Mrs Withers returned to England for a family visit, he shared a house at Eaglemont with Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton. He also befriended Charles Conder, Arthur Loureiro and George Rossi Ashton. Tom Roberts soon started calling him bq). The Colonelbq). for his efficiency and his desire to organise. In 1890 the Withers family moved into the old mansion at Charterisville in Heidelberg. Withers was able to have a separate studio where he taught art, Fanny taught drawing, and other cottages on the estate were sub-let to his fellow artists at two shillings and sixpence a week.
His other graphic work of this time included illustrations to Bohemia , (eg supplement 29 October 1891 with 'sporting’ gentlemen as well as one of the jockeys). He was, however, known as a painter in his lifetime and later.
He did oil on panel Droving Sheep offered by Bridget McDonnell Gallery in May 2001 (cat.12 ill.). The catalogue notes that Adelaide Anthony of Aldershot, England, stated in a letter of 1927 that Withers had given her painting after it had been in an exhibition in Melbourne in 1914. She gave it to her daughter, Barbara Anthony.
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- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2011
