painter, was presumably the Mr Pybus who advertised in February 1854 that he 'would be happy to paint Portraits, if he could procure a room in Hobart Town suited to the purpose’. Meanwhile, specimens of his work could be seen at Robin Vaughan Hood 's shop and gallery. By July Mr Pybus, portrait painter of Beaulieu House, was reported to have 'shut up shop’. He must have left Tasmania immediately after handing over a suspiciously 'anonymous gift’ of £10 to Bishop F.R. Nixon in September; the following month he was at 186 Collins Street, East Melbourne, from which address he exhibited 'a Dutch Study’ and Hindoo Girl Bathing (both oil paintings) in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition. Hindoo Girl Bathing was shown in the Australian Museum Exhibition at Sydney the following month, together with Portrait of a Gentleman and Still Life , the latter being described in the Sydney Morning Herald as a 'a gem in the exhibition’. Since both exhibitions claimed to show the work of local residents, Pybus must have been in Melbourne only en route to Sydney from Hobart Town, the repetition of exhibits precluding the possibility that the Sydney exhibitor could have been Robert Pybus (c.1826-71), a later artist (brother?) of New South Wales.
In February 1858 William Pybus was exhibiting a still-life with poultry, eggs and game 'brought out in very striking relief’ (perhaps another viewing of the 1854 still-life) in the window of E. Baldwin’s shop in Hunter Street together with two other oil paintings: View of a Sheep Station in New England and The Interior of a Farm-Yard, with a Steam Threshing Machine in Operation . The Empire newspaper considered that the landscapes gave 'a vivid and faithful representation of Australian scenery; and there is a warmth of colouring and animation about the groups of figures in the foreground which can only be achieved by talent of a high order … We are sorry to add that their author, an artist of so much merit as Mr. Pybus, should have met with so little encouragement from the patrons of the fine arts in New South Wales, as to be at the present moment unable to obtain employment’.
A similar complaint had been voiced by Joseph Dyer in September 1857 in a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald . Dyer had described Pybus (misspelt in the paper as Tybus and not identified as either Robert or William) as 'a master of colour, and far above mediocrity as a draughtsman … [yet] scarcely known to his fellow colonists’. This could have been because William Pybus was not permanently resident in Sydney, although Robert Pybus was listed as an 'artist’ of Edward Street, Balmain, in the Sydney Directory for 1858-59. William must have been in New England about 1857 in order to paint his sheep station, and afterwards he lived in the Hunter Valley. According to the New South Wales Probate Office, he had been a resident of Maitland for some time before his death on 2 June 1859, aged 40. His sole property consisted of pictures and drawings to the value of £70.
Robert Pybus died at Wentworth, outside Sydney, in 1871, aged 45. The P. Pybus who exhibited a pencil drawing, Tigers over their Prey , in Hood’s shop window, Liverpool Street, Hobart Town, in December 1878 as a pupil of John Carter (q.v.), was doubtless a relative, possibly a son of one of the two still 'scarcely known’ Pybus painters.
- Writers:
- Writer, Staff
Note:
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
