sketcher, carpenter and builder, came to Hobart Town on board the Bussorah Merchant in January 1838 as an assisted emigrant. A coach-maker from County Cork, Insley was accompanied by his 21-year-old wife Catherine, a straw-bonnet maker, and his sister-in-law Sarah Buckley. The Insleys lived in Liverpool Street and at one stage owned at least two house and shop complexes. They engaged various employees, possibly for the straw-bonnet business.
In 1839 Insley completed a tabernacle (altarpiece) which Father J.J. Therry had ordered for St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney. Gothic in style, this was executed in a 'masterly fashion’ according to a Hobart Town newspaper and reflected favourably on the 'taste and ingenuity of Mr Insley’. The tabernacle was 9 feet 9 inches x 9 feet (2.97 × 2.74 m), with wings and spires covered with 'fretted work’ which was about to be bronzed and gilded; Insley charged £25 for it. At the same time he agreed to make a smaller tabernacle 'in the Corrinthian [sic] style’ for Therry at a cost of £10. It was possibly intended for St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Hobart Town, where Therry was now priest and Insley churchwarden and superintendent of carpenters, stonemasons and labourers on the building. As well as being actively involved in the erection of the church, Insley collected for the building fund.
A surviving sketchbook (Crowther Library) contains pencil, and pencil, pen and wash drawings, mostly landscapes, as well as some crude armorial drawings and sketches of coaches. Two watercolours of Hobart Town and one of Melbourne (1861, DG) are detailed, careful and quite competent renderings of city architecture, but they show little interest in either landscape or people. View in Macquarie Street Hobart , for example, is dominated by the long façade of the street’s buildings which quite overwhelm the out-of-scale city folk. View of Melbourne from the South Side of the River Yarra , published as an engraved letterhead in Melbourne by J.P. Brown after a watercolour by Insley, was probably made on the way home. William Insley died at his residence, Rockboro, Blackrock Road, Cork, in October 1864, having left Hobart about 1861.
- Writers:
- Glover, Margaret
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
