Watercolourist, designer and settler, John Carter was born in Waltham Abbey, England where he was a designer of printing and weaving. He emigrated to Australia on the S.S. Great Britain with his wife and family in 1861 and later went to New Zealand for about 7 years where two more children were born before returning to Australia. In 1867 he painted two transparencies to decorate local business premises for the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne. The first, 12 × 6 feet (3.6 × 1.8 m), for Messrs Greig & Murray, depicted the Victorian coat of arms; the second, 20 × 12 feet (6.1 × 3.7 m), for the Southern Insurance Company, was altogether more elaborate. In it Carter painted the Duke seated beside Neptune in his chariot drawn by sea-horses and followed by mermaids leading the Duke’s ship, the Galatea , across the ocean.
When his watercolour Sketches from Nature, New Zealand were shown at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute in 1869, Carter himself was probably in New Zealand. His name appears in the Dunedin trade directory for the following year. Then he returned to Melbourne, being listed as a drawing teacher of Rathdowne Street, Carlton, in 1872-73. He showed A Panel in Pencil , A Panel with Victorian Birds, for Decoration , A Design for Paper and a watercolour of fruit at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition in preparation for the 1873 London International Exhibition in 1872, while another Fruit watercolour was shown non-competitively at the preparatory exhibition to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Mr Carter of Victoria showed 'some nice pictures of still life’ with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1877; the Sydney Mail critic thought that Oysters would 'probably deceive a good many casual observers’.
More natural history subjects were included in the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition from 23 Drummond Street, Carlton (Vic.): Fruit , Bird’s Nest , Redbreast’s Retreat and Belladonna Lily . In 1880 four of his watercolours (including New Caledonian Pigeon ) and two oil paintings (both Fruit ) were sent to the Melbourne International Exhibition by the Victorian Academy of Arts of which he apparently remained a stalwart member. Some of his landscape and natural history drawings, both of Australian and New Zealand subjects, are in a family collection. Many others are held privately.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
tolmih
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2012
