Tom Alban was born in St Petersburg, Russia, on 3 March 1887 and, apart from a period of study at the Slade School where he learned anatomy from Sir Frank Calderon, nothing is known of his early years or training. It appears he served in the Indian Army before he came to Australia. The titles of some of the works he exhibited in the Queensland Art Society’s annual exhibitions in 1924 and 1925, Black leopard and white peacock and Baloo , suggest a more exotic location. In 1925 he served on the Queensland Art Society committee and also received a prize for a landscape in oils at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association August exhibition.
Alban later worked as a tutor in the Art Training Institute, Melbourne, in the late 1930s when Olive Ashworth was enrolled as a student. In the early 1950s he was well regarded for his instructions in anatomy at the East Sydney Technical School.
He produced some finely incised representations of Aboriginal people during the year he worked as a decorator for Gordon and Irene Dunstan’s Essexware ceramic studio at Leura in the Blue Mountains during the mid 1950s. The Dunstans sought inspiration for their Aboriginal work in Melbourne Ward’s Museum of Natural History at Medlow Bath. Clearly Alban did so too and maintained a connection with the family as he painted a posthumous portrait of Melbourne (1903-66). This work, dated 1967, is in the collection of State Library of New South Wales.
The only known example of his oil painting, Stockman , which was auctioned by Gregson Flanagan Fine Art, Perth, in 2004, shows he was a capable illustrator which was probably his profession. The title also reflects the more Australian theme of other works exhibited in Queensland, Droving and Two galahs .
- Writers:
- Glenn R. Cooke
- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2011
