Peter Smith Templeton was born in Glasgow on 1 December 1875, the youngest child of two boys and a daughter born to John Templeton and Blaine Rankin nee Smith. He arrived in Brisbane on the Closeburn in October 1889, having travelled with his siblings and widowed mother to stay with her cousin in West End, Brisbane.
Templeton studied under Godfrey Rivers and Martyn Roberts at the Brisbane Technical College, exhibiting in the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association exhibition in 1896 as a technical student. He worked as senior artist in the Government Printing Office in Brisbane for approximately thirteen years. There he formed a lifelong friendship with fellow artist Lloyd Rees ; he flatted with Rees and Walter Taylor in Mosman for a time. He married Fannie Myrtle Hutchinson in 1920 and moved to Sydney where he worked as a commercial artist for twelve years. He fathered one daughter, Blaine.
Templeton was a lithographic artist, and designed several posters for the tourism industry such as one of Brisbane dated 1909, and later several of Dunk Island including Dunk, the romantic isle, Great Barrier Reef, Australia (1935). Templeton came from a musical family, sang in performances of the Messiah and taught music from his rooms in Pitt Street, Sydney. When the family returned to Queensland he played the organ at various Presbyterian churches in Brisbane, which largely funded his lifestyle.
At the same time he began to exhibit his watercolours with the Royal Queensland Art Society, contributing more than one hundred and thirty works between 1933 and 1960. He was made a life member of the Society. The subjects of his watercolours focus largely on Brisbane city and suburbs with forays to the north and south coasts, the Darling Downs and as far south as Sydney. He also produced some illuminations.
Templeton died in Brisbane, 11 June 1971.
- Writers:
- Cooke, Glenn R.
Note:
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
