Design and Art Australia Online

Watercolorist, soldier and businessman, John de Mansfield Absolon was the fourth of twelve sons of the renowned English watercolour painter John Absolon (1815-95) and his French wife née de Mansfield. He was known as amiable, modest and retiring. He served in the Queens Rifles in the 1860s and also exhibited with the Society of British Artists. He came briefly to Western Australia in 1869 and returned to England to marry Sarah Bowles Habgood daughter of goldsmith and merchant Robert Mace Habgood (qv) of Tulse Hill. They were married in Trinity Church on June 28th 1870. On board ship he spent many hours painting the sea, sky and shipboard life. The young couple returned to Western Australia where her father’s company, R. M. Habgood & Co, became Habgood, Absolon & Co responsible for the Geraldine lead mine near Geraldton, the company stores and the shipping business. It transported wheat, wool, lead and pearl shell to England, sandalwood to Singapore and luxury items and building materials from Europe to Western Australia. They lived in St George’s Terrace. He became Chairman of the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce about 1875. Absolon had little time to paint but he managed a number of pictures from the verandah of the family’s Northam residence and others in Fremantle and on board ship. His “Sunday Evening on the Deck of an Emigrant Vessel” was praised as masterful when exhibited in the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition in 1879 after his death. The critic wrote: “'To Mr Absolon’s graceful pencil the gallery is indebted for two of its best works-a scene on the deck of an emigrant vessel on a Sunday evening, and the exterior of a church in Brittany. In the former the ship is bowling along before a fair wind on an even keel, night is falling, and a young mother of the peasant class, with the English roses in her face, is reading by lamp light to a large family party from a Bible, with all sorts of home associations clinging to it. The arrangement of the figures is quite unconventional the light skilfully managed, and the general tone of the work very harmonious The second picture represents a village cure of the Dr Primrose type, on his way to church, laying his hands in benediction on the heads of some young children who look up smilingly in the good man’s face, while their elders reverently doff their hats. An air of tranquillity and repose seems to breathe from the quaint little church, the graves yard, and the evening landscape. A third picture, by the same artist shows us the wife of Camille Desmoulins outside the Palace of the Luxembourg, in which her husband is confined, gazing on its impenetrable walls with a countenance full of touching sadness.“ Absolon represented the London Art Union in Western Australia from 1871. “The Art-Union of London was established to promote the knowledge and love of the fine Arts, and their general advancement in the British Empire, by a wide diffusion of the works of native artists; and to elevate Art and encourage its professors, by creating an increased demand for their works, and an improved taste on the part of the public.” He was also a Justice of the Peace. He was a bird fancier exhibiting pigeons, canaries and finches in 1874. In 1874 the Absolons returned to London to see their families. Once more shipboard life provided time to paint again. His special skill had been in rendering colour and light. Absolon died suddenly in Perth aged thirty-six after a protracted illness.

Writers:

Staff Writer
erickd

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2014