painter and photographic colourist, was born in England. Aged two, he came to Victoria with his parents who were attracted by the gold discoveries. The family settled in Melbourne. While an extremely young student at what became the Royal Melbourne Technical College, John worked as a colourist with the Melbourne photographic firm of Johnstone & O’Shannessy . In 1867 he was employed as 'artist in watercolours’ with the Adelaide Photographic Company then managed by H. Davis ; his senior colourist colleague was Ebenezer Wake Cook . He remained with the firm for about three years while attending painting classes in Adelaide. In 1867 69 he was listed as a professional artist of Carrington Street. At the 1873 London International Exhibition Mr Upton of Adelaide showed 'Specimen of Coloured Photograph by the Photographic Company’ in the South Australian court.

John Upton may have accompanied his exhibit to London since he left for Europe at about this time and enrolled as a student at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His oil painting, Peasant Girl at the Shrine (1876), purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1883, was painted at the end of his Munich studies according to J. B. Mather , who considered it a splendid technical performance for such a young painter. Then Upton went to London, undertook further study at the South Kensington Schools and became a professional portrait painter. His oil painting of a girl’s head (AGSA) is possibly the Study of a Head exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, the year Upton returned to Adelaide having been appointed (on Sir Edward Poynter’s recommendation) to the newly created position of painting master at the Adelaide School of Design attached to the Art Gallery of South Australia. He proved too ill to begin teaching and after some months reputedly returned to Munich, where he is said to have died soon after.

During this brief period in Adelaide, Upton painted several formal oil portraits of local citizens, including Sir Robert Torrens, premier of South Australia (c.1881, NLA), and Abraham Abrahams, chairman of the Board of Governors of the South Australian Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery. The latter portrait, commissioned by the board, was presented to Abrahams in 1881 for the gallery’s collections.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011