S. T. Gill
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
-born Australian artist.
sheet 20.2 x 25.7 cm. National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
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Gill was one of the inhabitants in Melbourne to take interest in photography - ordering a daguerreotype
Daguerreotype
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
camera and the other necessary equipment in 1846, setting up as a professional photographer. With public interest in the new medium not forthcoming, Gill sold his camera to Robert Hall prior to his departure with John Horrocks
John Ainsworth Horrocks
John Ainsworth Horrocks was one of the first settlers in the Clare Valley in 1839. He established the town of Penwortham in South Australia. Horrocks is unfortunately known more for his death, when he was accidentally shot in a hunting accident...
' expedition northwards to the Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges is the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts approximately north west of Adelaide. The discontinuous ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna...
later in 1846. Horrocks, the first settler of South Australia's Clare Valley
Clare Valley
The Clare Valley is one of Australia's oldest wine regions, best known for Riesling wines. It lies in the Mid North of South Australia, approximately 120 km north of Adelaide. The valley runs north-south, with Main North Road as the main thoroughfare....
, mounted a small expedition to search for suitable farming land in the country northwest of Mount Arden in the southern Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges
Flinders Ranges is the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts approximately north west of Adelaide. The discontinuous ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna...
. Gill's watercolours and pencil sketches provide a narrative of this fateful trip, which saw Horrocks die after being accidentally shot. In January 1847 Gill raffled some sketches made by him on the journey, and in February an exhibition of pictures was held in Adelaide of which he appears to have been the organizer. In 1849 he published Heads of the People, 12 lithographic sketches of South Australian colonists.
In 1852, following a series of personal tragedies including bankruptcy and ill health, Gill joined a large group of South Australians heading for the Mount Alexander
Mount Alexander
Mount Alexander is a mountain that is located approximately 125 km north-west of Melbourne, near the small town of Harcourt. It rises 350 metres above the surrounding area to a level of 744 metres above sea level...
gold fields, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
. Originally intending to turn his hand to digging for gold, he soon returned to portraying images of everyday life, depicting life on the gold fields and the emergence of substantial towns like those of Ballarat
Ballarat, Victoria
Ballarat is a city in the state of Victoria, Australia, approximately west-north-west of the state capital Melbourne situated on the lower plains of the Great Dividing Range and the Yarrowee River catchment. It is the largest inland centre and third most populous city in the state and the fifth...
and Bendigo
Bendigo, Victoria
Bendigo is a major regional city in the state of Victoria, Australia, located very close to the geographical centre of the state and approximately north west of the state capital Melbourne. It is the second largest inland city and fourth most populous city in the state. The estimated urban...
.
Late in 1852 Gill moved to Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
where he began recording the impressive growth of that city, although he continued to take periodic sketching trips to the gold fields and other parts of Victoria. Gill's skill as a lithographer resulted in the production of a number of lithographs during this period including Victorian Gold Diggers as They Are, The Diggers and Diggings of Victoria As They Are 1855, and Sketches of Victoria. It is largely from these works, a number of which were reproduced in England and Germany, that his reputation as "artist of the goldfields" was formed.
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
in 1856, but was unable to repeat his earlier success, and returned to Melbourne in 1862. The Melbourne that Gill returned to had developed considerably during his absence, and his works had been largely forgotten. He did, however, procure one major commission from the Trustees of the Melbourne Public Library in 1869, to produce 40 watercolours of life on the Victorian goldfields.
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, and when he collapsed and died on the steps of the Melbourne Post Office in 1880 he was buried in a pauper's grave. Gill's body was eventually moved to a private grave in 1913, thanks to a subscription raised by the Historical Society of Victoria which also arranged for a headstone to be placed there.
Publications
- S.T. (Samuel Thoms) Gill, The diggers & diggings of Victoria as they were in 1852. No. (1-2) (Melbourne: J.J. Blundell, 1854?).
- S.T. (Samuel Thoms) Gill, Sketches in Victoria. No. (1-4) (Melbourne: J.J. Blundell, 1855?).
- S.T. (Samuel Thoms) Gill, The Australian sketch book (Melbourne, s.n., 1855).
- S.T. (Samuel Thoms) Gill, Victoria illustrated (Melbourne: Sands & Kenny, 1857).
- S.T. (Samuel Thoms) Gill, Victoria illustrated. Second series, with descriptive letterpress (Melbourne: Sands, Kenny, 1862).
- Geoffrey Dutton, S.T. Gill's Australia (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981).
- Ron Appleyard, Barbara Fargher, and Ron Radford, S.T. Gill: the South Australian years, 1839-1852 (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 1986).
External links
- http://www.nla.gov.au/catalogue/pictures/Gill's work in the National Library of AustraliaNational Library of AustraliaThe National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
, CanberraCanberraCanberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
] - Gill's work in the National Gallery of Australia
- http://www.balgal.com/?id=gillstsubscriptionbaSubscription Ball Ballarat 1854 - Work at Ballarat Fine Art GalleryBallarat Fine Art GalleryArt Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian Heritage Registerand by the National Trust of Victoria.The...
] - Gill's work on the Picture Australia database
- E. J. R. Morgan, 'Gill, Samuel Thomas (1818 - 1880)', Australian Dictionary of BiographyAustralian Dictionary of BiographyThe Australian Dictionary of Biography is a national, co-operative enterprise, founded and maintained by the Australian National University to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's history....
, Volume 1, MUP, 1966, pp 444-445. - Samuel Thomas Gill at Australian Art
- Prints, images by S.T. Gill, Prints and Printmaking, National Gallery of Australia