painter and lithographer, was born in London on 1 June 1793, son of an American Tory portrait painter who fled to England in 1778, James Earl (Augustus added a final 'e’ to the family name), and his wife Caroline, widow of Joseph Smyth, another American Tory. Augustus’s uncle, Ralph Earl, was an eminent American portrait painter; his older sister, Phoebe, became flower painter to Queen Victoria, while her husband, Denis Dighton, was a printer who later lithographed some of Earle’s watercolours. In the light of this artistic background it is perhaps not surprising that young Augustus displayed a precocious talent for painting. He exhibited Judgement of Midas – Ovid’s 'Metam[orphosis]’ at the Royal Academy at the age of thirteen. It was one of seven paintings he had hung there between 1806 and 1815, others being Caius Marcius Taking Possession of the City of Corioli (1809), two canvases of Banditti (1811, 1812) and View of the Harbour and Part of the Town of Calais (1815).

In 1815 Earle gained a passage on a storeship bound for Malta and spent the next two years exploring and painting in the Mediterranean. Part of the time he travelled in the gunship commanded by his half-brother Captain (later Admiral) W.H. Smyth, a friend of Thomas Brisbane, subsequently Governor of New South Wales. Earle’s view of Valetta was engraved and published by Smart & Sutherland of London in 1818 after he had returned to England at the end of 1817. Almost immediately he set off again, this time to North America. He embarked in March 1818 and in July exhibited two paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1820 he visited Chile and Lima, then settled at Rio de Janeiro. In South America he began work on a series of watercolour drawings recording his travels. Gate of Pernambuco, in Brazil, with New Negroes , subtitled 'The police ordered the slaves to be housed, on account of an attack made on one of the outposts by the Patriots in 1821’, was shown at the Royal Academy in 1824, Earle being catalogued ( in absentia ) as an honorary exhibitor who had painted the picture in Brazil.

In 1824 Earle left Rio for the Cape of Good Hope then for Calcutta. En route, his ship the Duke of Gloucester was forced to anchor off the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. As the captain was intending to purchase potatoes from the island’s six adult inhabitants, Earle decided to go ashore and sketch. While thus engaged, the sloop 'tacked and stood out to sea!’ leaving Earle (and his dog Trim) stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for the next eight months (several views National Library of Australia, one MU Grimwade Col.). On 29 November he was rescued by the Admiral Cockburn on its way to Hobart Town. Arriving on 18 January 1825, Earle noted the 'perfect park scenery’ of the place in a watercolour, Cluny Park, Van Diemen’s Land (1825, NLA). He apparently painted a few oil portraits of local citizens in Tasmania (at least three have been attributed to him – a pair depicting G.A. Evans and his new young wife, and a shooter with Australian birds also said, more convincingly, to be a later – 1830s – portrait of John Gould , possibly by Henry Williams ). He certainly did a series of 8 detailed, linked watercolour views of Hobart Town (Dixon Gallery), developed into a large London panorama at Robert Burford’s in 1831. To Earle’s Arcadian view of this sedate British outpost, Burford’s artists added some local colour, including a chain gang and a group of convicts.

After four months, Earle left Van Diemen’s Land in the Cyprus , reaching Sydney on 14 May 1825. There he quickly established himself as the colony’s leading artist, replacing the less sophisticated portrait and miniature painter, Richard Read senior . Commissioned to decorate the dining room of Nash’s Inn at Parramatta with a transparency for the emancipists’ farewell banquet in honour of retiring Governor Thomas Brisbane on 7 November, Earle took as his subject 'Diogenes in Search of an Honest Man’, a topic indicative of the artist’s wit if not tact. Afterwards, the stewards of the dinner presented the transparencies to Brisbane. As reported in the Sydney Gazette :

“The largest, which was placed immediately to the rear of His Excellency, exhibited Diogenes in search of an honest man, and the philosopher is conducted, by Fame, to the shores of Australia, when, the moment he lands, by the aid of a lanthern, he discovers the likeness of Sir THOMAS BRISBANE: – the cynic then completed his arduous investigation, accomplishing what he conjectured to be a fruitless task. The 'infant empire’ of Australia is represented by the kangaroo ( that spirit of Australia !!!) as well as the woolsack, together with an exuberant cornucopia, illustrative of the flourishing state of the Country. Immediately under the figure of Sir THOMAS, an altar is presented, on which TRUTH is inscribed; – on this is consuming a ghastly right hand severed from the body, pourtraying discord . In its grasp, which even death has not been able to loosen, is seen an ensanguined dagger, on which calumny is written; thus the whole fabric of falsehood is faithfully exhibited in a perishing condition.”

It’s no wonder that Brisbane’s small daughter was said to have screamed when she saw it!

Far more lucrative portrait commissions from wealthy, non-convict Sydney society ('Exclusives’) followed, including Colonial Secretary Frederick Goulburn, Captain and Mrs Brooks and Dr Robert Townson. In particular, Earle painted a life-size oil portrait of Governor Brisbane (Government House, Sydney) commissioned by the civil officers of New South Wales, for which he was paid £50. Also attributed to him are two full-length oils, one of Captain John Piper and the other of his wife and children (Mitchell Library), as well as oil heads of Piper and his wife (National Gallery of Australia), a child (Art Gallery of South Australia – also attributed to Read senior, J. F. Lewin and Anon) and some preliminary sketches for the paintings of Piper and family (NLA). In 1826, for a concert given by the Sydney Amateur Concert Society, Earle painted classical statues (Apollo, Minerva and Melpomene) on three boards temporarily blocking the windows of an upper room in Sydney’s courthouse in Castlereagh Street (to improve the acoustics), adding ornamental coats of arms of Britain and Australia between the panels. He was a committee member of the host society and one of the four 'Directors of the Evening’.

On 8 July 1826, Earle advertised the opening of his art gallery at 10 George Street, Sydney, where he was offering painting lessons and 'a large assortment of every description of articles used in Drawing, Painting &c.’ as well as his own pictures. Rev. John McGarvie visited the gallery and made a valuable list of the paintings in his diary (ML), recollecting the visit in the Sydney Gazette of 28 and 30 July 1829. Frederick Garling may have been one of his pupils.

By August Earle had been given a lithographic press by the astronomer James Dunlop and was issuing a portrait of the Sydney Aborigine Bungaree (ML), 'the first attempt of Mr. E. in lithography’, he proclaimed. In November he published the first part of his Views in Australia , comprising two hand-coloured lithographs: Sydney Heads and View from the Sydney Hotel . The second and final pair made their appearance the following month – Sydney from Pinchgut Island and a view of the Macquarie lighthouse – though a more extensive series had initially been proposed.

Earle had reverted to travelling. As always, he sketched the scenery and the indigenous people encountered along the way. Towards the end of the year he made several journeys inland to sketch the Blue Mountains, Wellington Valley and Bathurst, then travelled north as far as Port Stephens and Port Macquarie. In January 1827 he applied for a land grant. He stated that he wished to settle in the colony, though not 'as a Man of business; business is quite foreign to me’. Predictably, his petition was unsuccessful. Later in the month, he wrote from outside Sydney requesting that the convict Edmund Edgar , who had assisted him with the production of Views in Australia , be re-assigned to Andrew Allen . He was about to embark on a series of eight detailed watercolours of Sydney for another grand Burford panorama. They were painted in February 1827 'under the inspection of Lieutenant Colonel Dumaresq [q.v.], by whom they were brought to England’ and the panorama was shown at Leicester Square in 1829-30. Earle’s original watercolours have not been located, but a published description and key survive. As was normal, in the process of enlarging the drawings were enhanced by Burford’s artists (advised by Dumaresq) with 'many European figures, [and] several groups of Natives, employed in their exercises and sports; and that useful animal the kangaroo is likewise seen playfully sporting on the turf’, Blackwood’s magazine noted (reprinted Sydney Gazette , 9 May 1829).

Earle travelled and made sketches in the rainforests of the Illawarra district early in 1827. He broke his leg on the return journey and recuperated at S.O. Hassell’s home at the Cowpastures, where he wrote a long letter to Mrs Ward describing in doggerel verse his adventures and present predicament. On 20 October 1827 he sailed for New Zealand on board the Governor Macquarie , with a view to recording its landscape and inhabitants. Thought to be the first professional European artist to take up residence in that country, he stayed for six months, returning to Sydney on board the same vessel on 5 May 1828.

On 12 October he left New South Wales forever, embarking in The Rainbow bound for the Caroline Islands. He then sailed to Guam, Manila, Singapore and Madras, making watercolour sketches at each port of call. Back at London in 1829 Earle published his set of lithographic Views in New South Wales, and Van Diemen’s Land (1830). A Narrative of a Nine [sic] Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827; together with a Journal of a Residence in Tristan d’Acunha, an Island Situated between South America and the Cape of Good Hope followed in 1832. Impatient to be off again, he accepted the offer of artist supernumerary with victuals on board the Beagle . The ship sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831, bound for Tierra del Fuego and Rio de Janeiro under Captain FitzRoy ; Charles Darwin was another passenger. Earle’s view of 'H.M.S. Beagle, January 1832, Porta Praya, Island of St Jago’ is in the Grimwade Collection, MU (acq. 1996). Continued ill health eventually forced him to leave the Beagle at Rio on 19 August, his place being taken by Conrad Martens . He returned to London some time after November 1833.

Earle exhibited Life on the Ocean, Representing the Usual Occupation of the Young Officers in the Steerage of a British Frigate at Sea and Divine Service, as it is Usually Performed on Board a British Frigate at Sea at the Royal Academy in 1837. The following year he showed A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia, in a Cabbage Tree Forest – Daybreak , an oil developed from a watercolour of his ill-fated Illawarra expedition (both versions NLA). He published his Sketches Illustrative of the Native Inhabitants and Islands of New Zealand (London 1838), provided Bay of Islands watercolours for another Burford panorama, which was also shown in New York (in 1840), and managed a little more travelling and writing as well as painting; but his health continued to deteriorate. He died of 'asthma and debility’ at 9 Diana Place, London, on 10 December 1838.

Earle’s portraits of white Australians are of great social interest, while his undated oil portrait of Bungaree (NGA), possibly painted in Sydney, depicts him as a dignified individual with a tragic awareness of his dispossessed and ragged state. It is possibly the first 'high art’ oil painting of an Australian Aborigine (a possible Lewin portrait may have preceded it). His major artistic contribution, however, is the collection of watercolours he painted during his travels (many NLA). He seems to have been the first freelance travel artist to tour the world, and he proved personally and artistically capable of adapting to whatever fate offered. His restless curiosity, his desire to explore and record unknown lands was matched and complemented by an essentially naturalistic, empirical vision, tinged at times with a somewhat sardonic sense of humour. The underlying narrative content of his art and his interest in the people who so often form an integral part of the painting reflect the enthusiasm and gregarious personality of the artist himself.

Writers:

Hackforth-Jones, Jocelyn
Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011