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painter, lithographer and photographer(?), was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. He arrived at Port Phillip on 25 November 1852 in the Blorenge . Listed as a practising artist of 118 Collins Street East, Melbourne, Thomas showed four paintings (all for sale) in the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s 1853 exhibition: Going to Stable , Far, Far Away , View on the Yarra, near Richmond and View from South Side of Prince’s Bridge, Melbourne . The last was probably the original of the lithograph River Yarra Yarra from South Side of Princes Bridge, Melbourne , published by Huxtable & Quarrill about 1853. Some copies state that Thomas lithographed the work, others that Giles was the lithographer. Six further views of Melbourne drawn by Thomas and lithographed by Quarrill were advertised for sale at 5s the set in the Armchair in February 1854. F. Varley published Thomas’s Victorian Views that same year—the work by which Thomas is now best known. Its lithographed subjects include Collins Street, 1853 , Geelong-Corio Bay 1853 , St. Francis’ Roman Catholic Church—Melbourne 1854 and First Melbourne Exhibition, November 1854 .

Thomas was at Sydney by the end of 1854, the year he dated a lithograph of Manly Beach. By early 1855 he was in partnership with Scipio Clint as Clint & Thomas, Portrait and Landscape Painters, Lithographic and General Draughtsmen of Jamison Street. Between 1857 and 1861 Thomas was listed at 61 Hunter Street, an address shared by the painter John Murphy . He continued to produce his own lithographs, including Sydney Sailor’s Home (n.d.) for Allen & Wigley and Wooloomooloo [sic] Bay (1855). A calendar for 1856 containing eight inset views of Sydney is stated to have been lithographed by him and published by John Degotardi .

Thomas painted at least two watercolours in 1857 showing the wreck of the Dunbar : Entrance to Port Jackson (ML) and The Gap, South Head, NSW (DG). His lithographs, similar to his drawings of the scene, were issued by several Sydney publishers, including J.R. Clarke. Clarke also commissioned Thomas to design sheet-music covers. The Mitchell Library’s collection includes his lyre-bird with native plants for the 'Australian Album’ (1857), a view of South Head for the cover of 'The “Columbian” Mazurka’ and a view of the Sydney Domain for the cover of 'The Last Rose of Summer’ (1856). The La Trobe Library holds the sheet music of 'The Australian Masonic Waltzes’ composed by George Peck , a ballad with Thomas’s sketch of Madame Carandini and 'The Cricket Match Schottische’ by E. Boulanger of 1857 illustrated with his colonial cricket match.

Thomas is best known for his topographical prints of Sydney and Melbourne, but he also made portrait lithographs of well-known identities. Indeed, when first in Melbourne he had been listed back to front as 'Thomas Edmund, portrait painter’ and several original watercolour and pencil portraits are known: his drawing of Lucy Escott is in a scrapbook (LT) and an unknown woman’s portrait is in another album (ML). In 1859 the Sydney Morning Herald noted Thomas’s 'clever’ tinted lithographic portrait of the late Robert Campbell in masonic regalia copied from a photograph and published by C. Goddard. The several portraits he contributed to the Month newspaper included those of Archbishop Polding and Daniel Cooper. Both portraits and views after Thomas were engraved for W. Mason 's Australian Picture Pleasure Book , including a portrait of the singer Catherine Hayes which Thomas had previously issued as a single lithographic sheet (ML). He also appears to have provided the illustrations initialled E.T. in the Illustrated Sydney News , e.g. Review Troops of 3 March 1855 and Tasman Island of 10 March 1855. According to a TMAG card, Edmund Thomas drew the anonymous 'Prisoners in cell of military prison, Anglesea Barracks’, pencil (TMAG, #5608 a & b).

Edmund Thomas seems to be the Mr Thomas mentioned in a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in September 1857 from Joseph Dyer, editor of the Sydney Magazine of Science and Art , as 'an excellent artist in oils, who has from want of appreciation, laid aside the honourable palette and taken to the camera and its chemicals’. Yet no oil paintings have been located, nor was Thomas advertising as a photographer at this time. He was, however, working in association with the photographers Freeman Brothers , primarily as an artist and designer. On 18 February 1859, Freeman Brothers had a letter published in the Herald correcting an earlier report commending the scenery and background in the firm’s photograph of the Victorian cricketers, pointing out that this 'was not photographed from nature, but was designed and executed by Mr. F. [sic] Thomas, of Hunter-Street … The portraits and figures are pure photographs, the background being afterwards introduced’. In November 1861 Thomas designed and executed 'a tasteful ornamental border’ for a large, over 2 foot (60 cm) square, photographic montage of politicians which Freemans were sending to the 1862 London International Exhibition. He also decorated the mount for Freemans’ six portraits of officers from the Cordelia with their shi

Lady Cooper exhibited a watercolour by 'Thomas’ in the New South Wales Court at the 1862 London exhibition. Watercolours apparently signed 'C.’ Thomas, such as a view of early Sydney and a landscape with waterhole and two black swans (Joseph Brown Gallery 1971) are almost certainly by Edmund, and lithographs acknowledged as by F. or C. Thomas (as either sketcher or engraver) are also his work. In 1865 two 'Edm’ Thomases were listed in the Sands Sydney Directory , one a photographer of Liverpool Street West, the other an 'artist’ of 53 Crown Street. Both seem to be the painter. From then on, however, he was listed solely as an artist (i.e. painter) until his death.

In January 1861 Thomas began teaching drawing on Monday and Thursday afternoons at the Australian Ladies College in Brougham Lodge, Darlinghurst, and moved into lodgings in Brougham Street. In September, he gained the additional position of drawing master at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, replacing Joseph Fowles . His classes in 1861 comprised figure and landscape drawing, geometrical and model drawing 'as applicable to the arts and manufactures’ and theoretical and practical perspective. He had two pupils for figure classes, six for landscape and six for the combined geometrical and perspective class in the first year, then amalgamated the figure and landscape drawing classes. In January 1862 'Theoretical and Practical Perspective’ was merely being promised; it evolved into 'free hand drawing from copies’. His pupils included William Macleod, the future illustrator and manager of the Sydney Bulletin , but he was not a popular teacher. When examined by F.C. Terry in 1865 attendance at Thomas’s sole class averaged seven and he was teaching only figure, landscape and flower drawing, the engineer Norman Selfe having taken over mechanical drawing.

In May 1865 Thomas submitted a design for a tablet to be erected in the Mechanics Institute Hall to record honorary members and was requested to submit 'one or two more designs’. The following month he presented two designs with tenders for making and erecting them, but it is unclear if either was ever carried out. He also painted transparencies. In 1863 the Sydney Morning Herald commented favourably on those in the Sydney Municipal Council Chambers 'painted by Mr E. Thomas, and handsomely set off with amber coloured lamp’. He died at his home, 37 Botany Street, Surry Hills, on 19 February 1867, survived by his wife, Augusta Amelia.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011