Artist and pastoralist

Edward Baker Boulton, Sydney: town and harbour 1879, the Royal Collection. Boulton was a prolific painter throughout his life, including a number of New England scenes. This is the fourth in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

On 27 September 1835, Arthur Ransome’s grandfather Edward Baker Boulton (EBB) left Liverpool Docks for NSW on the Ellen. He had just turned 23.

We do not know what family discussions were held prior to his departure. We do know that he arrived in Australia with some financial resources and would later be joined by his brothers in various pastoral activities.

EBB’s love of art was already well entrenched. He took his sketch book with him on the Ellen and sketched throughout the voyage, leading to a book of pencil sketches published in 1837.

The colony of NSW was 48 years old in 1836 with a European population of 78,929. About 35% were convicts, many more the children of convicts.

There was a small upper class groups of officials, landowners and merchants who had accumulated significant wealth and were now investing some of it in new mansions including Lindsay (1834-36), Elizabeth Bay House (1835-39) and Carthonia (1841).

On 1 October 1836, Governor Bourke granted grazing rights to pastoralists beyond the “Limits of Location” in return for a £10 annual license fee to come into effect from New Year’s Day 1837. This triggered a land rush.

EBB began investing in real estate and grazing rights in Sydney and the Central West on his on his own and in conjunction with his brothers. By September 1842 he was sufficiently established to sell a large portfolio of land titles to a group including his friend Oswald Bloxome for the substantial sum of £1,700.

Bloxome (1802-1888) was ten years older than EBB. Both were interested in painting, with Bloxome becoming patron of English marine painter Sir Oswald Brierly while Brierley was in Sydney.

Both were interested in pastoral expansion. Bloxome took up a large block on the New England which he named Rangers Valley after his family home in England, The Rangers. The Boulton brothers were still focused on the Central West, where by 1848 they held 228,400 acres in the Wellington Valley.

From the beginning, EBB had set about establishing himself within Sydney’s small local elite. He joined the exclusive Australian Club in September 1838 and by1842 he had also become secretary of the Union Assurance Company.

He also continued painting and exhibiting. Much later, his grandson Arthur Ransome would remark that his grandfather was always more interesting in painting than in his sheep!

On 3 April 1850, EBB married Mary Atkinson, daughter of Anglo-Irish entrepreneur James Atkinson and wife Mary. Now established, he decided to take his new wife to England to see the Great Exhibition as their honeymoon.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 February 2020. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020