sketcher, watercolourist and lithographer, was born in South Australia; his father, also named William (1804-1886 see ADB 2), and his mother Julia née Matthews, had migrated from Plymouth and arrived there in February 1837. The National Library has a sketchbook of pen and ink and pencil drawings by William Wyatt dated 1857, including five images of traditional Aboriginal figures camping, dancing and throwing spears. The National Library also has two watercolours by Wyatt, while an undated watercolour, Hindmarsh Island , is in the Mitchell Library. An ink sketch, South Australian Picnic , dated December 1859 and described as 'showing a picnic party of eighteen people seated around a cloth spread on the ground’ when offered for sale in 1927, has not been located. Two ink drawings, End of a Government Road surveyed in 1839 , drawn in 1859, and an Aboriginal man as 'Australia’ (a good-humoured parody of Britannia), dated 16 January 1857, appeared in an 1857 sketchbook of mixed South Australian drawings offered for sale by the Adelaide bookseller Michael Treloar in 1993.

Wyatt made several lithographs of the South Australian mines in the 1860s. In 1867 he drew a gently comic lithograph, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Welcome by the Natives , showing the young royal visitor in naval uniform being greeted by the animals of Australia (NLA). Wyatt was one of the two painting judges for the 1870 SA Society of Arts annual exhibition, the other being George Hamilton . It was probably another William Wyatt , [possibly related?] who won the sculpture prize at the Society’s exhibition the following year.

Adelaide’s Wyatt Benevolent Institution was founded by the senior William Wyatt (1804-1886) because his only surviving child (William Wyatt 1838-1872) had predeceased him without leaving an heir.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989