topographical artist, sketcher and sailor, was born on Norfolk Island on 13 December 1791, third son of Philip Gidley King , the third Governor of NSW, and the only son of King’s wife Anna Josepha, née Coombe. He left for England with his family in 1796 to be educated then entered the Royal Navy in 1807. He returned to Sydney in September 1817 as commander of an expedition to explore 'the yet undiscovered coast of New Holland, and for completing, if possible, the circumnavigation of that continent’. He undertook four surveying voyages from Sydney before retiring to England in 1823. His journals along with his sketches and charts were published in England in 1827. Between 1826 and 1830 King took part in the South American Survey, charting the coasts of Peru, Chile and Patagonia as commander of the Adventure . Drawings made on these expeditions are in the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

King owned large estates in New South Wales granted to him by his father and by Governors Macquarie and Brisbane. In 1824 he became a shareholder in the Australian Agricultural Company and was appointed its resident commissioner in 1839, having returned to live in the colony in 1832. He continued to carry out exploration and survey work, visiting the Murrumbidgee River region in 1837 38 and New Zealand and Norfolk Island in 1838 and 1839. Between 1843 and 1855 he undertook further surveys, including ones to Port Stephens, Parramatta and Newcastle. He was a fellow of the Royal and Linnaean Societies, a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society.

In 1855 King was promoted Rear-Admiral. He died on 26 February the following year, survived by his wife Harriet, née Lethbridge, from Launceston, Cornwall, whom he had married in England in 1817; there were eight children of the marriage. Conrad Martens painted at least two splendid, highly finished watercolours of King’s naval funeral procession on Sydney Harbour (ML, p.c.). A plaster portrait medallion of King, made by Thomas Woolner in 1854 and still in its original frame, was presented to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by his son Philip Gidley King (the younger) in 1891.

King sketched throughout his life. A copy of a drawing by W.N. Chapman , View of the Town of Sydney on Norfolk Island (1804, ML), and a watercolour and pencil sketch of a lion dated 1805 were done when he was about 13. More professional efforts followed. In the preface to Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia (London 1826) he states:

the views with which these volumes are illustrated were engraved by Mr Finden from my own sketches on the spot; the charts, which are reductions of those in the Admiralty Atlas were engraved by Mr. Walker; and the three plates of Natural History by Mr. Curtis [q.v.], from drawings made from the specimens by himself, by Henry C. Field, Esq., and by Miss M. Field’.

According to his son, the frontispiece illustration of a Patagonian was 'drawn from my father’s sketches by Mr. Runciman, who married my father’s sister, Elizabeth King’ (i.e. Charles Runciman, brother of the better-known British painter Alexander Runciman).

Illustrations after King also appeared in his and Captain R. FitzRoy 's Proceedings of the First Expedition under the Command of Capt. P. Parker King (London 1839), the first volume of the Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1838 Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe . Other illustrations are after Conrad Martens and Augustus Earle , with one work stated to be by King 'with elements of’ Conrad Martens’ – an artist well patronised by the King family after he came to live in New South Wales. (King later copied landscapes by Martens, then some of his copies were re-copied by James Lethbridge Templer , King’s nephew.) The second volume of the Narrative contains two views of Valdivia after King.

Several of King’s sketchbooks and various separate works are in the Mitchell Library, many the originals for the engravings that appeared in his various publications. Ranging from topographical, natural history and ethnographical subjects to the occasional portrait sketch, they show that King was a prolific artist with some talent for landscape but with little grasp of figure drawing. Early caricatures, like The Quarter Deck with Admiral de Courcy and his daughter promenading on board the Diana (?) in 1809(?) and his ink portrait of Commodore Baudin (1802, ML), which has only a hint of caricature, are more successful than his more idealised portraits of young men. His son recollected that King 'in his early days was fond of caricaturing and got into scrapes, but the neatness of his pen marked him out as a marine survey[or] and w[atercolourist]’. Surprisingly, King’s watercolour of Bungaree, annotated 'Boon-ga-ree Aboriginal of New So Wales 1819 who accompanied me in my first voyage to the NW Coast’, appears to be an adaptation of the 1831 lithograph by Charles Rodius rather than an original work.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989