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 printed John Carmichael and 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”. 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.
Other details about Edgar’s life remain uncertain. His name was frequently misspelt as 'Eagar’ and he used several aliases, including 'Edmund Edgar Bults’ and 'Edgar Bult’. In 1838 he received a ticket of leave and was conditionally pardoned six years later. From then on he seems to have concentrated on portraiture. 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. He may have later have moved to Parramatta. According to the family, two portraits of Parramatta citizens dating from the 1850s or 1860s are signed on the back with the name 'Elgar’ or 'Edgar’ (now obscured). But another unconfirmed reference suggests he became a fruit and vegetable vendor in Sydney.
At London’s 2002 Olympia Fair the Moss Vale (NSW) dealer John Hawkins found a pair of watercolour on ivory miniatures of a woman and a boy signed verso 'Edmund Edgar taken in Sydney in 1834’, with the woman identified on the backing paper as Mrs J. A. Turner. Claiming that these were the earliest signed and dated Australian miniatures known, Hawkins onsold them to an Australian collector reputedly for between £10,000 and £20,000. However, the Mitchell Library owns a portrait of Mathew Wellington dated March 1833. An undated portrait of an unidentified male sitter and a miniature of a man on board ship, sold Sotheby’s, London, 1987, are inscribed on the back 'Drawn by Edmund Edgar Sydney’. Attributed watercolours in private collections include a full-length portrait of Richard Fitzgerald (previously attributed to Richard Read junior ).
- Writers:
- McDonald, Patricia R.
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2018
