sketcher, civil engineer and clergyman, son of the commissary-general at St Helena during Napoleon’s imprisonment, was educated at Cambridge then trained as a civil engineer. With his wife, Clarissa Elizabeth, née Guilding, and their young son, Denzil Charles Jelf, Ibbetson came to South Australia to work as a civil engineer in the copper mines. Later he was ordained a minister of the Church of England and appointed to the parish of St John, Adelaide. A lithograph, Proposed Church of St. Saviour, Redruth [Burra Burra], South Australia, Looking in the Direction of the Burra Burra Mine , published in London by Day & Son after Ibbetson’s drawing, combines both professional interests. This is an extremely competent work with marked skill in architectural draughtsmanship. Its quality doubtless owes something to its English lithographer but no drawings by Ibbetson are known for comparison.

In December 1863 Ibbetson was a judge of the paintings in the South Australian Society of Arts’ seventh annual exhibition. He delivered a lecture on the subject of 'Natural Magic’ to the Norwood Young Men’s Association in 1864. The Miss Ibbetson who won the prize for the best animal picture executed by artists born in the colony at the South Australian Society of Arts’ 1869 exhibition appears to be a daughter, except that the sole Ibbetson daughter listed by Statton, Margaret Emily, would then have been only six.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011