painter, engraver and lithographer, had worked in London as an engraver and miniature painter before being convicted of robbery at London’s Old Bailey in September 1825 and sentenced to death. He was described in the London and county press as a respectable looking young man, an engraver and miniature painter who was ‘very clever in his profession’. According to one report he had in his possession, at the time of his arrest, a self-portrait 'in irons, leaning on a table, in a melancholy attitude’. A petition taken up to secure a mitigation of Edmund Edgar Bult’s sentence was signed by several people including 'his employers’: William Thomas Fry, portrait and historical engraver; James Appleton, engraver; and Henry Richard Cook, engraver. It was signed too by his landlady in Walworth Common. His sentence was duly respited to transportation for life and he arrived in NSW on the convict ship Marquis of Huntley in September 1826 – described on the ship’s indent as house painter (erroneously) and engraver, aged 24.
On arrival he was assigned to artist Augustus Earle, who had recently acquired a lithographic press and, having no experience in the medium, sought Edgar’s assistance in the production of his Views in Australia and other lithographs. Edgar issued at least one independent engraving while assigned to Earle,the small portrait of Governor Darling that forms the frontispiece to George Howe’s 1827 Australian Almanac. According to the Sydney Gazette of 30 July 1829, 'so scrupulous was he of ushering into the world a print that did not bear a correct resemblance of our worthy chief, but he threw aside the first plate which sustained a blemish, when nearly completed and the artist proceeded to execute his work afresh’.
Following his work for Earle, Edgar’s skills were sought by a succession of employers, including engraver and copperplate printer John Carmichael and schoolmaster John Gilcrist, for whom he taught drawing and perspective to the sons of civil and military officers and ‘to the rising generation of this colony’ – although this was interrupted in October 1828 by a three-month spell in an iron gang for being found ‘drunk & in a disorderly house at a late hour of night’. The colonial artist and public servant The colonial artist and public servant Samuel Elyard was one of Edgar’s pupils and he later remembered him as a man of 'kind disposition’ who 'painted miniatures very nicely, and had he kept steadily to his profession, would perhaps have been an eminent artist’. When Gilcrist died in August 1829 Bult was briefly employed as a drawing master and teacher of penmanship by another schoolmaster, Dr Wilks, before being transferred in May 1830 to Crown Solicitor William Henry Moore, remaining in Moore’s service until 1843. He worked as a clerk but found time to take on private portrait commissions, signing his pictures Edmund Edgar.
Edgar received a ticket of leave in 1838 and in January 1843, under the name Edmund Edgar Bult, was given a ‘ticket of leave passport’ which allowed him ‘to follow his profession as an Artist in the districts of Windsor, Campbell Town and Parramatta for 6 months’. He was looking for portrait commissions in areas where the demographic was largely settled emancipists and their families. At the end of the six months he was recommended for a conditional pardon, and received notification in June 1844 that the recommendation had been approved.
Many details of Edgar’s life remain uncertain. He was listed in Low’s Directory for 1847 as an artist of Argyle Street, in the Rocks area of Sydney, west of Trinity Church and there is some evidence that he may have moved to Parramatta in the early 1850s but his place and date of death has not been established. He is probably not the Edward Edgar who died a pauper in the Liverpool Benevolent Asylum in July 1854, ‘aged 58’. [That person is probably a former convict named Edward Edgar or Hedger.] The details of his birth are also uncertain. He called himself Edmund Edgar when he first appeared in court in London, but two gentlemen came forward and said that his real name was Edmund Bult and that his connections were most respectable. They said that his father had once been one of the richest butchers in Marylebone, but had failed in business. This once prosperous butcher may have been William Bult (c1763-1834) who married Elizabeth Bowles at St George Hanover Square in November 1790. The Bults were religious non-conformists who seem not to have formally registered the births of any of their children.
A number of Edgar’s portraits are in public collections. The Mitchell Library (State Library of NSW) holds a small watercolour portrait of Mathew Wellington dated March 1833 and a small watercolour of a man on board ship, inscribed on the back 'Drawn by Edmund Edgar / Sydney New South Wales / April 1842’. The Caroline Simpson Collection at Sydney Living Museums includes a pair of Bult’s portrait miniatures, which came to light at London’s 2002 Olympia Fair. They are framed for hanging above a mantelpiece and the subjects identified on the backing papers as ‘Mrs Turner’ and her young son ‘John Andrew Turner’. Mrs Turner’s portrait is also signed and dated on the verso of the image: ‘Painted by Edmund Edgar / taken May 1835 / Sydney N.S.W.’. A full-length portrait of Richard Fitzgerald is held in the National Portrait Gallery and at least seven attributed watercolours are held in private collections.
- Writers:
- McDonald, Patricia R.
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2018
