painter, amateur photographer, engraver, lithographer and army officer, was awarded the prize for the best landscape in oils at the 1866 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts for a view of Robe Town, Guichen Bay , described by the South Australian Advertiser as 'a small picture but entitled to high commendation for the fidelity of its details, and the care of its execution’. Colonel Biggs also exhibited photographs, lithographs and wood engravings, receiving another prize for his stereoscopic photographs.
At the society’s 1867 exhibition Biggs was awarded the principal watercolour prize of 5 guineas for a V iew of Glenelg Jetty . The Advertiser critic, however, dismissed the work as 'a simple sketch with a boat or two prettily enough drawn but with nothing else worthy of notice in it’. Biggs won four prizes in 1869, including one for the best original South Australian landscape in oils by an amateur. He won a further four prizes at the following year’s exhibition, including best marine view in oils and best South Australian marine view in watercolours. His 1871 awards included prizes for the best oil painting illustrative of colonial life and best oil painting by a South Australian artist – 'the gems of the exhibition’. The first was reviewed as 'a choice bit of colonial scenery which may be seen any day during haymaking in a hundred places’, while the second was a sketch of the Onkaparinga at the Horseshoe : 'the river with the mill – backed by the high range of hills, and part of the township nestling at the foot of the hills, a fine transcript of the scene’. No surviving works have been identified despite his contemporary reputation, perhaps because at all these exhibitions Colonel Biggs exhibited as an amateur and probably did not sign his work.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Note:
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
