painter, illuminator, draughtsman and agent, was born in South Australia, only son of Sarah Jane and William Joseph Joyner, clerk of the Adelaide Council. In 1867 he won a prize for his drawing of HMS Galatea (the Duke of Edinburgh’s ship) at the South Australian Society of Arts’ eleventh annual exhibition. The following year he won two prizes for his drawings, one a watercolour landscape and the other the best pencil landscape (original or copy) by an amateur. The critic on the Adelaide Observer , however, considered that Mrs Benham had produced the best pencil drawings, even if Joyner’s were 'not far behind in manipulative skill’, commenting that Joyner’s Near Penshurst and Miss Benham’s Ivy Bridge were both 'admirably finished’ copies. At the 1869 exhibition Joyner won three more prizes, once again including that for the best watercolour landscape by an amateur as well as one for an original perspective view of the Adelaide Government Offices. In 1870 he came second in the amateur landscape section and won a guinea prize for a pencil landscape touched up with white on coloured paper.
An illuminated address signed 'Joyner’, presented to Walter Boyd Tait Andrews, Registrar-General of South Australia, 'on the eve of your departure for England’ from the officers of his department, the Lands Titles Office, Adelaide, is dated 1 July 1882. The address (quoted Treloar) is inscribed on a sheet of vellum, with the recipient’s name and the initial letter of text highly decorative and all other capitals ornamental. Running the full length of the l.h.s. is a standard with a twirled ribbon, captioned 'The Deeds Themselves, Though Mute, Speak Loud the Doer’, topped by a banner illustrated with a cloaked Aborigine, spear in one hand and partially unrolled deed in the other. Encased in its Morocco folder, it was offered for sale at $1,000 by Michael Treloar in 1993.
Joyner had married Janet Bowman in 1877 and they had nine children. He died at Semaphore, South Australia, on 27 December 1900.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
