Henry Hainsselin

painter, engraver, lithographer and photographer, was baptised at Devonport, England, on 20 April 1820, son of Dennis Hainsselin, an auctioneer, and Diana Lark, née Cummings. During his studies under Jan Willem Pieneman, director of the Amsterdam Academy, he painted a reduced copy of Pieneman's best-known painting, The Battle of Waterloo. Following his return to England, Hainsselin exhibited paintings of genre and figurative subjects at the Royal Academy every year from 1843 to 1853, with the exception of 1847. In 1852 he exhibited Ragged School Student at the British Institution. In 1846 he lithographed six sketches of Aborigines after G.H. Haydon, an Exeter school friend, to illustrate Haydon's Five Years in Australia Felix.

Hainsselin left Plymouth in April 1853 in the Emma Godwin, reached Melbourne on 11 September and immediately set out for the Ballarat goldfields. At least three watercolours made about this time have survived (LT): Portrait of a Digger 1853, Prospector's Hut, Ballaarat and On the Diggings at Ballaarat. By January 1855 he had set up in Melbourne, at 117 Flinders Lane East, as a draughtsman on wood and stone. This venture was not successful and by June 1856 he was on the electoral roll as a miner at Woolshed, Beechworth. The Ovens Directory for 1857 lists him as an 'artist' at the same locality.

Following the rush to Rutherglen in July 1860, Hainsselin seems to have moved there. In June 1862 he purchased land in Main (Argyle) Street, next to the post office, and set up as a commission agent and sharebroker, later as a photographer. Said to have 'traded in everything from second hand mining plants to pictures and photography, being himself no mean artist', his activities earned him the nickname 'Johnny Allsorts'. In May 1863 he designed and painted most of the transparencies hung in the town to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Wales.

A short time after the death in February 1878 of his brother Thomas, an auctioneer at Devonport, Hainsselin returned to Melbourne. He settled in St Kilda and worked as an art teacher. Both he and his pupils exhibited at Buxton's second and third annual exhibitions of Paintings on China, Terra Cotta and Fabrics in December 1883 and November 1884, Hainsselin receiving a gold medal at the third exhibition for two china paintings. At the Ballarat Fine Art Exhibition in June 1884 he showed three watercolours of St Kilda beach. He also exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society that year. In July 1884 he was referred to as a 'painter of animals' by the journal Once a Month. His copy of Pieneman's Battle of Waterloo was exhibited late in 1885 at Hines Gallery, Collins Street, by which time he was living in Park Road, St Kilda West. Hainsselin returned to England in 1886. His last recorded exhibit is a painting in that year's autumn exhibition at the Manchester City Art Gallery, at which time he was living in Walton New Road, near Warrington, Lancashire.

Thomas A. Darragh.