painter, designer, engraver and printer, appears to have been the eldest son of the five colonial-born children of William Buelow Gould and Susan (known as Amy), née Reynolds, born in Hobart Town in 1839. W.B. Gould died in 1853 leaving his family destitute and, apart from a married daughter, the Goulds disappear from Tasmanian records after his death. Since a livelihood was more easily obtained in goldrush Melbourne than in Tasmania, they may have been assisted to go there. If so, William would have been only sixteen years old when first listed as a printer and engraver of 111 Russell Street in the 1855 Melbourne Directory ; it is not known with whom he was working.
William Gould, printer, engraver and lithographer, continued to be listed in Melbourne directories until 1860. He mostly worked from his home in Russell Street, except in 1859 when he also had premises at 102 Collins Street, East Melbourne. In 1857 he showed three works at the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts: an oil painting, The Top of the Hill , and two specimens of colour printing. He contributed four works to the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition: a painting by an unknown artist and Portrait of a Digger (artist unstated), both for sale, plus two colour lithographs of his own design and printing. One was a portrait of an Aborigine, perhaps his undated hand-coloured lithograph after a photograph by George Perry of Simon, an Australian Aboriginee [sic] of the Yarra Yarra Tribe which opposed the Landing of Batman 1835 (National Gallery of Australia; Mitchell Library).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
