Design and Art Australia Online

sculptor, monumental mason and phrenologist. McGill worked in Port Fairy, Victoria, from the mid 1850s until the early 1860s, then lived at Maitland, NSW, and was working in Sydney by 1864.

In Port Fairy McGill worked on the carvings of St. John’s Church of England, designed by Nathaniel Billing and built between 1853 and 1858. Author Hal Porter later identified a number of McGill carvings in Port Fairy’s buildings and cemeteries in a letter quoted in Scarlett, 1980, pp 394-5.

After moving to Sydney, McGill carved the St. Jude’s Fountain, Alison Road, Randwick (NSW, 1866) and the nearby statue of Captain Cook, High Cross, Randwick (1874). The St. Jude’s fountain features a clever use of naturally occurring red stripes in the sandstone block to highlight the decorative floral motif.

McGill carved the capitals on James Barnet’s extension of the Australian Museum, Sydney, 1866, and was commissioned by NSW Chief Justice Sir James Martin to sculpt a life-size replica of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates for Martin’s Potts Point garden (1870, moved to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, during World War II).

McGill carved the allegorical figures, including “Science”, on the Sydney General Post Office’s George Street façade in 1869, as well as the northern façade of the first stage of the same building. Darlinghurst Gaol also benefited from his work.

McGill is also credited with the Woolloomooloo Gates of the Royal Botanic Gardens, erected in 1873.

As an avid phrenologist, McGill cast the death mask of executed bushranger Captain Moonlight in 1880 (Historic Houses Trust NSW Police & Justice Museum Collection). He was also known as a caricaturist and his model of the Zigzag Railway was sent to the Melbourne Exhibition in 1880-1881.

McGill died at his Darlinghurst home on 2 July 1881, apparently as the result of an earlier accident involving a collision with a horse in Paddington.

Writers:

Riddler, Eric

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