landscape and scene-painter and actor, was born on 2 February 1829 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Joseph Jefferson, an actor, and Cornelia, née Thomas, a French refugee actress from Santo Domingo, West Indies. Joseph was only four years old when he made his stage debut. When his father died in 1842 he was obliged to support his mother, and he pursued a career in the theatre throughout the United States and Europe, working both as an actor and assistant scene-painter. In 1850 he married Margaret Clements Lockyer; in March 1861 she died, leaving him with four children. Jefferson put the three youngest into boarding-school, and in November he and his elder son set out for Australia.

On 7 January 1862 they arrived at Sydney aboard the Nimrod from San Francisco. As part of a short theatrical season in Sydney Joseph Jefferson appeared for the impresario W.S. Lyster in The Octoroon , for which the scenery was prepared from Jefferson’s own Mississippi sketches. Jefferson then moved to Melbourne, and this became his base for almost three years. His first stage appearance was at the Princess Theatre, but later he changed to the new Haymarket. He was extremely popular in a variety of comic and occasionally serious roles, the general favourite being Rip Van Winkle. He performed in the provincial centres of Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine and travelled widely in Victoria as a tourist, even venturing up to the Murray River. In 1863 he had a season in Adelaide. The following year he performed in New Zealand and twice toured Tasmania. He left for Britain early in 1865. In Chicago (USA) in December 1867 he married Sarah Warren of the McVicker’s Theatre. After a most successful acting career in Britain and the United States, he died at Palm Beach, Florida, on 23 April 1905.

Jefferson’s father and paternal grandfather had both been scene-painters and it seems that this influence and his own early work as a scene-painter stimulated his interest in easel painting. Predominantly a landscape painter, he was heavily influenced by the Barbizon School, especially Corot and Daubigny. Being inhibited by his lack of formal training, he rarely painted human figures or animals. He owned a large collection of paintings, mainly nineteenth-century Dutch and French works, although Reynolds and Gainsborough were also represented. His own paintings were shown at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1868 and at the National Academy, Washington DC, in 1890. In 1899, and again in 1900, he exhibited with the Fisher Gallery, Washington DC.

Jefferson does not seem to have exhibited while living in Australia but some of his paintings were subsequently shown in the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. The collector Dr John Blair lent a watercolour, Scene in Victoria , the bookseller J.W. Hines lent 'seven Funny Sketches’ in one frame and other drawings were stated in the catalogue to have been lent (as well as drawn) by 'J. Jefferson’. In 1875 two of Jefferson’s watercolours of Tasmanian scenery were shown by Dr Blair in the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and Jefferson’s exhibitions at the Fisher Gallery included at least one painting with an Australian subject. The H. Hobill Cole Collection, auctioned in 1923, included his South Head, Sydney .

Jefferson was described by the Melbourne critic James Smith as 'slight and consumptive, with a small, sharp eager face, one of the most unassuming men, charming companions and most finished comedians I ever met with’. Smith added that he was 'fond of hunting, fishing and sketching’. John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Jefferson is in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC.

Writers:

Watson, Michael J.

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011