Moredun Station - the rambling ties of kinship

Artist's perspective: Moredun Station c1848, Edward Thomson was the first artist in the early colonial period to extensively paint scenes of the New England Tablelands.

The tales of old New England entwine and ramble.

In October 1853 William Gardner, the New England’s Tableland’s first chronicler, took up the position of tutor on Andrew Wauchope’s Moredun run near Ben Lomond. 

Born in Edinburgh, Andrew Wauchope had arrived in Port Macquarie from Scotland in 1838.  

This entry point was probably no accident, for Port Macquarie was the headquarters of Archibald Clunes Innes after whom Glen Innes is named.

Innes, a fellow Scot, had come to NSW with his regiment in 1822. From November 1826 to April 1827 he had been commandant of the Port Macquarie penal colony, returning to Port in 1830 to settle following the opening of the area to European settlement.

Innes was in the process of building a pastoral, shipping and mercantile empire that, at its peak would make him one of the wealthiest men in NSW. This empire included extensive New England pastoral interests, beginning with Waterloo Station in 1836.

There were clear information flows among the Scots. Another Scot who arrived a little later in 1840 was Innes’ cousin William Tydd Taylor who would buy the Terrible Vale run.

Working men arrived too, many of whom would settle on Moredun or immediately surrounding runs. With time, their and their children’s marriages would create an entwined pattern of kinship that extends to this day.

On 22 April 1844, Andrew Wauchope married Anne Boyd The Scottish born Anne was the sister of Archibald Boyd who had the adjoining Boyd's Plains (later Stonehenge) run among his interests.

Boyd, the cousin of entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd of Boydtown fame, would lose money in his cousin’s financial crash. He ended his life in England writing flamboyant historical romances to generate cash, reportedly dying in a garret.

Wauchope, a canny manager with an ability to pick good usually Scottish staff, was a wealthy man by the time William Gardner became tutor on Moredun in 1853

In 1854, the Wauchopes decided to return to Scotland leaving the property in the hands of managers, first J T Sperling and then John Mitchell. Mitchell had begun as a worker on Moredun and would prove to be a highly competent long running manager.

Back in Scotland, Andrew and Anne had enough wealth to rent and staff some big Scottish Houses including Airth Castle in Stirlingshire. At the census of 1881 he still gave his occupation as Australian squatter!

Moredun was finally sold in 1890 following Andrew’s death, with John Mitchell acquiring his own place.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 March 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 

Artist's bleak conclusion

Impressive landscape: Edward Baker Boulton's 'Australian Pastoral View'. His paintings represent a significant contribution to Australian and New England art. This is seventh and final in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

We come now to the final stage in the life of painter and pastoralist Edward Baker Boulton.

Our story began with the colourful life of English children’s writer Arthur Ransome, Boulton’s grandson. We then followed the story of Boulton’s life from England to Australia and the development of his painting and pastoral interests including the acquisition of Bergen op Zoom station outside Walcha.

We mixed with the small intellectual elite centered on Sydney’s Darling Point, accompanied Boulton though his two marriages, the births of his large brood and his multiple trips between England and Australia.

Cyril and Edith Ransome. Edith was Edward Boultons artistic confident.

From November 1875 to 1883 Boulton was based at Bergen op Zoom, focused on his painting and property management. In December 1882, daughter Edith married Cyril Ransome in England.

Edith, a talented painter, had been Boulton’s artistic confidant. He wrote to her to express his love.

Isolation and homesickness were becoming too much for Boulton. There were also financial problems.

Writing to Edith in November 1882, Boulton said that “the truth is that this property is too small for the family.” He went on: “so when I do come home, I fancy that I shall have to go out again with the family or alone… for the property must be increased.”

Things picked up, and in 1883 Boulton sailed for England leaving Nithsdale in charge of Bergen op Zoom.

In 1884 Boulton travelled widely, staying with his friend George Macleay who had taken a summer villa at Lake Maggiore in Italy. Macleay, a wealthy pastoralist and son of Alexander McLeay after whom the river is named, was a fellow member of the Darling Point set.

Boulton came back to Australia in 1887, but almost immediately returned to England to be with his English family.

In February 1890, Boulton returned to Australia with second wife Rachel for the wedding of Ransome’s daughter Mary to Stewart Donald Ryrie, the son of a prominent Monaro pastoral family. The couple were married on Bergen op Zoom on 27 May 1890.

Rachel had been reluctant to move to Australia and was not impressed by her experiences, so the couple returned to England. 

On 3 August 1893, Bergen op Zoom was marked by tragedy when Nithsdale shot himself. He had been lonely and it had all become too much.

Boulton returned to Bergen op Zoom, dying there on 11 October 1895, He is buried beside Nithsdale in the Walcha cemetery.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 March 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 

A complicated family

Nature study: Mount Victoria, c 1890, Art Gallery of NSW, was one of many paintings that Edward Baker Boulton produced in the last years of his life. This is the sixth in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

At the end of 1873, Edward Baker Boulton (EBB) sailed for Australia, arriving in Sydney on 16 March 1874. He was accompanied by his 19 year old second son, Nithsdale, leaving behind second wife Rachel with sixteen children, six by his first wife Mary, ten by Rachel. 

EBB’s return to Australia seems to have been forced by economic factors. The partnership with David Bell that included management of Bergen op Zoom outside Walcha was coming to an end. EBB needed to put aside his English life and focus on the Australian assets that were the source of family income.

The family position can best be described as complicated.

Rachel did not want to uproot her settled English life and come to Australia. There were apparent tensions between Rachel and Mary’s children. In the end, all of Mary’s children (the “Australian” family) would come to Australia.

EBB himself had to support two households from Bergen op Zoom, while managing a sense of isolation from his English family and the cultural life of England and Europe.

In April 1875, EBB was forced to return to England to resolve family matters leaving young Nithsdale behind in charge of the property. He returned in November 1875 accompanied by another son, the seventeen year old George William who would later become the family stalwart managing Bergen op Zoom.

The station had now become Australian headquarters for the Boulton family While the number of Boultons living there varied, the 1876/77 electoral rolls show EBB, his brothers Thomas and George plus sons Oswald and Nithsdale all in residence.

No longer an absentee landowner, Boulton focused far more on the practical business of wool production and running a successful grazing property. However, he did not give up his love of art, nor of his desire to achieve recognition as an artist. Indeed he seems to have redoubled his efforts.

Over the 1870s he exhibited with the NSW Academy of Art. In 1879, he showed four pictures at the Sydney International Exhibition, a further work at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880. He was also trying to sell his art.

EBB was conscious of the conflict between his rather purist view of the role of the artist and his desire to achieve commercial success as an artist.

Writing in 1883 to daughter Edith, Arthur Ransome’s mother and Boulton’s confidant on artistic matters, he said “I am painting for money too but I trust that won’t cause me to fall off that has been the bane of many who have left nature behind & taken to ‘making pictures’”. 

To EBB’s mind, there was nothing “more pernicious, aesthetically or morally”. 

We now come to the last stages in Boulton’s life as pastoralist and painter, something that I will explore in my final column in this series.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 March 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 

Purchase of Bergen op Zoom, return to England, Mary's death

Intelligentsia: Blanche Mitchell, daughter of explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell. Her letters and diaries provide a picture of the life of the small Darling Point intellectual elite including the Boultons. This is the fifth in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

On 25 August 1852, Edward Baker Boulton (EBB) and wife Mary sailed for Australia accompanied by the two children born while the family had been living in England, Emily (1851) and Edward Oswald (1852). 

EBB was now a member of the Darling Point intellectual elite whose members included Charles Nicholson and Robert Lowe, later Viscount Sherbrooke.

The family settled back happily into Darling Point life with its mixture of literary and artistic endeavour, intellectual discussion, balls, picnics and other social outings. Five additional children were born during this Sydney period.

We know as much as we do of this period because of the letters of Blanche Mitchell, the daughter of surveyor and explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell. Mitchell’s death in 1855 had left his family in some financial difficulty. Blanche seems to have been accepted as part of the Boulton family group and described their activities in her letters. 

The Boulton brothers seem to have purchased Bergen op Zoom station outside Walcha soon after Edward’s return, for in August 1853 EBB mortgaged Bergen op Zoom plus other assets to raise the then large sum of £5,900.

In 1855, EBB entered into a partnership with David Bell that would last until 1876. Bell, who seems to have lived on and controlled the actual management of Bergen op Zoom, would become a very successful pastoralist, buying Muluerindie station in 1873 then Rimbanda station in 1875.

Despite his growing success and the attractions of Sydney life, EBB missed England and Europe. On 18 May 1859, the family sailed for England on the SS Camperdown.

While advertised as a fine ship, it was a bad trip especially for Mary who was pregnant again. In December 1859 Mary died at her parent’s place in Ireland, probably from complications associated with the birth of her new daughter, also named Mary.

Following Mary’s death, EBB moved his large brood back to his English home area, installing them in Tilley House near Wem. There on 6 June 1861 he married Rachel Gwynn. Over the next ten years they would have another ten children, making for a very large brood indeed!

Edith, their first child, has already appeared in our story. An accomplished artist, she was to be the mother of writer Arthur Ransome and EBB’s confidant when it came to the painting they both loved.

During this English period, EBB pursued his artistic endeavours both painting and exhibiting. The family itself lived in some style. The 1871 census shows that they had seven servants including a governess and two nurses. I think the last three were badly needed!

I suspect that EBB might have stayed in England. However, events now intervened that required his return to Australia and to Walcha.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 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 

Building dynasties in New England

Crystal Palace exhibition, 1851. Attended by Edward Baker Boulton and his wife, this was the first of the great expos that were such a feature of the second half of the 19th century.This is the fourth in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

Over the years that I have been sharing our past with you, themes recur. One is the way in which some of our big pastoral families identify with Australia and their immediate areas, while others are torn between their new home and the UK and Europe they left behind.

The Wrights and Northern Whites fall in the first group, Edward Ogilvie (Yulgilbar Station) in the second.

Ogilvie wanted to build a dynasty, but he was also in love with European life and especially Italian life and art. His conflicting ambitions would lead to dynastic failure.

Edward Baker Boulton (EBB) belongs to the second group. While he would die on the New England and be buried in Walcha cemetery, his heart lay elsewhere. As grandson Arthur Ransome summarized, he was always more interested in his art than his sheep.

Following his marriage to Mary Atkinson on 3 April 1850, EBB decided to take his wife to visit the Great Exhibition (the Crystal Palace Exhibition) of 1851.

Driven in part by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, this was the first of the great international expos that were such a feature of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Few places were immune from their allure. In an earlier series, I mentioned that Armidale soap maker George Mallaby exhibited his wares at the 1900 Paris expo.

EBB and Mary had travelled to England with Mary’s parents. Initially they lived in a house that Mary’s parents had purchased, before moving to a leased place of their own.

We do not know much about this period beyond the facts that two children were born (Emily 1851, Edward Oswald 1852), while EBB continued to sketch and paint.

The Boultons were still in England when on 17 June 1851 an advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald that would change the family’s direction,   

In 1834, John McLean had taken up a run near Walcha that he called Bergen-op-Zoom, a reported tribute his relatives Allan and Francis McLean who had assisted the Dutch in the defence of that town against the French.

McLean had died, and now the 44,800 acre run was advertised for sale as part of his deceased estate.

The Boultons’ focus had been the central west. Now they were to acquire Bergen-op Zoom, in so doing bringing them within New England's history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 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 

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 

Celebrated author Arthur Ransome's Australian connection

Swallows and Amazons has number of references to Australia. This is the third in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

The late 1920s found English writer Arthur Ransome and wife Evgenia settled in the English Lake district where they would spend the rest of their lives. The Manchester Guardian offered Ransome a full time position as foreign correspondent, but he declined this in favour of a new writing project.

The result was Swallows and Amazons, published at the end of 1930, the book was the first in a series that established Ransome as one of the best and most popular English children's writers.

Swallows and Amazons follows the outdoor adventures of two families of children as they sail and play on one of the local lakes. The Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) sailing a borrowed dingy, Swallow, meet up with the Blackett children (Nancy and Peggy) in their dingy Amazon.

The book is a lovely picture of outdoor life and of adventures centred on Nancy and Peggy's uncle Jim Turner (Captain Flint) and assorted baddies.

Swallows and Amazons has a number of references to Australia.

The Walker children's mother Mary Walker was Australian. At one point in the book, Titty Walker muses: "I wonder whether the real Queen Elizabeth knew much about ships". Mother responds that, "Queen Elizabeth was not brought up close to Sydney Harbour."

Arthur Ransome had never visited Australia. Why, then, the references to Australia?

The answer lies in Arthur's mother, Edith, the daughter of Australian grazier Edward Baker Boulton and his second wife Rachel Gwynn.

Arthur was only 11 when his grandfather died in 1895, but retained clear recollections of him. He would have learned more from his mother, for she was close to her father. They shared an interest in art and frequently discussed their painting in the regular letters that passed between them.

This brings us to the Australian leg of our story described by John Edwards in his 2004 book, Edward Baker Boulton: Australia's Forgotten Artist.

Lavishly illustrated with Boulton's own paintings, the book traces Boulton's life from his birth in England in 1812 to his death at Walcha in 1895.

Edward Baker Boulton was born in Shropshire, England, on 29 August 1812, the sixth child of Thomas and Elizabeth Boulton nee Baker. Despite economic ups and downs, the Boultons were a prosperous middle class family with some capital.

As described in previous series, NSW boomed during the 1830s. Wool prices were high as were stock prices, fueled by demand for sheep and cattle to stock the new land claimed within the ever expanding frontier. Speculation in land and stock was rife, with fortunes being made and sometimes lost.

In 1835, Edward Boulton decided to join this rush.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 January 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 

Arthur Ransome's life of danger and intrigue

Russian beauty: Evgenia Shelepina. Tall, attractive and intelligent, Evgenia became the love of Arthur Ransome's life. This is the second in a series on the life of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connection.  

In May 1913, English writer Arthur Ransome left England for Russia. This began the second stage in his life, one marked by adventure, danger and romance set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. It reads like a spy novel and in some ways it was.

On that first trip, Ransome stayed in St Petersburg for three months travelling and learning conversational Russian. He returned to Russia on visits in 1914 and 1915 before becoming the Moscow based correspondent for the Daily News in November 1915, a post he held for four years.

The Russian Empire was in turmoil, drained by war. The Tsar’s attempts to reform failed because of indecision and internal conflict, and in November 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power.

Ransome sought an interview with Leon Trotsky, effectively the number two in the Bolshevik hierarchy. There he met Evgenia Shelepina, Trotsky’s personal secretary.

A committed Bolshevist, Evgenia was very tall, attractive and intelligent. Restless, unhappy in his personal life, Ransome was immediately attracted. A relationship developed that would last the rest of their lives.

Ransome’s knowledge of Russia and its language, his connections with Evgenia and other members of the new Government, informed both his writing and the reports he seems to have provided to British intelligence.

I don’t think that Ransome was ever a spy in the conventional sense, he was too erratic for that, too supportive of the Bolshevik side. However, his reports do seem to have been valuable.

In 1919, Ransome brought Evgenia out of Russia to Reval in Latvia where Ransome was now based. It was a dangerous escape, one that left Ransome with a serious gastric illness, a problem that was to plague him all his life.

Based first in Reval and then Riga, Ransome was now the Russian correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He and Evgenia wanted to marry, but that required a divorce from Ivy.

After increasingly bitter negotiations, Ransome and Ivy were finally divorced. On 8 May 1924, Arthur and Evgenia married at the British consulate in Reval.

In February 1925, Arthur and Evgenia returned to England, setting up home in the Lakes District. Ransome loved this area and it was convenient to the offices of the Manchester Guardian, still a major outlet for Ransome’s writing.

This move marked the start of the third phase in Ransome’s life. It is now time to introduce the New England connection in Ransome’s life, a connection that would influence his later writing.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 22 January 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 

First pages of a literary life

1913: Crowd gathered outside the court following the decision in the Lord Alfred Douglas libel case. Arthur, Ivy Ransome, left. This is the first in a new series on the life of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connection.  

2020 begins with another New England story, this one about a famous English children’s author, a nineteenth century Australian squatter and prolific painter and a Walcha property with a most unusual name.

Our story will take us from English literary life in the first half of the twentieth century back though the Russian Revolution to the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde Affair. We then travel further back to Sydney Town of the1830s before moving forward following the story of a large English-Australian squatting family.

Arthur Mitchell Ransome was born in Leeds on 18 January 1884, the eldest child of Cyril Ransome and his wife Edith nee Boulton.

This was an academic, intellectual family. Cyril was a history don at Yorkshire College, later Leeds University, while Edith was a talented amateur painter, a love she inherited from her father, Edward. Father and daughter seem to have written to each other regularly, sharing their interest in painting.

Arthur seems to have been a bookish, somewhat withdrawn, child who did not get on well with his schoolmates. I think that he compensated by creating a vivid internal world, one that would appear later in his books.

In 1897, Cyril Ransome died from a bone infection that even a leg amputation had failed to stop.

The relationship between Arthur and his father was complicated. Cyril seems to have been very much the Victorian father, both withdrawn and demanding, sometimes harsh Arthur would regret all his life that his father’s death stopped him getting to know Cyril, when they might have talked as adults and helped Arthur understand.

Upon leaving Rugby in 1901, Arthur Ransome enrolled in science at the Yorkshire College. I have no idea why, for he had already decided to be a full time writer.

Less than a year after enrolling, Arthur obtained a job with a London publisher and began writing for literary magazines. This allowed him to make the jump into full time writing.

Ransome published his first book in 1904, a collection of essays This was followed by a stream of publications, none especially successful apart from Bohemia in London (1907).

In 1908, Ransome fell in love with Ivy Constance Walker. They married in March 1909. It would prove a disastrous marriage for both because Arthur could not give Ivy the love and attention she needed.

In 1913, Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas sued Ransome for libel over a commissioned 1912 piece on Wilde that Ransome had written. Ransome won, bankrupting Douglas in the process.

Ivy stood by Ransome during the trial, indeed she seems to have enjoyed the attention, but Ransome was exhausted and wanted to escape. A few months after the trial, he left for Russia on an extended research and writing trip, starting a new stage in his life.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 January 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 

The Patersons and their artistic legacy

Frozen Moment. A National Library of Australia photo of Esther Paterson

One of the best known paintings in the Hinton Collection, Esther Paterson’s The Yellow Glove also known as Portrait of Betty Paterson, is now on tour as part of the NERAM travelling exhibition. Esther entered the painting in the Archibald Prize competition in 1938. She didn't win, but the following year Howard Hinton purchased the arresting portrait for his Armidale Teachers' College collection.

I have known this painting since childhood because the Armidale Teachers’ College was just up the road and I went there quite often. The paintings in the Hinton Collection were everywhere, hanging in the hallways and the lecture theatres.

I was probably seven when I first saw it. It is a piece of art that I really like, but I knew nothing about either Esther or Betty Paterson. Investigating, I find that they were members of one of those artistic families that Melbourne seems to specialise in.

Our story begins in Scotland with John Ford Paterson and his wife Elizabeth, née Stewart. I have no information on John Ford Paterson nor on Elizabeth, but the family was clearly artistic with the three oldest boys all completing initial artistic training in Scotland.

In 1872, the Paterson boys decided to emigrate en-mass to Melbourne. Sister Mary Jane followed in 1881 after the death of her husband with her young son, the future Australian poet and dramatist Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson.

Marvellous Melbourne was booming. In 1880 the population reached 280,000, then 445,000 in 1889. Money flowed like water, and a fair bit of that went to Paterson Bros, the interior design business established by the eldest boy Charles Stewart with his brothers. One of their best known projects was the interior design for William Greenlaw’s Villa Alba, now a Melbourne museum.

Hugh Paterson, Esther and Betty's father, was born in Scotland in 1856 and, like his brothers, attended the Royal Scottish Academy schools. In addition to his work with Paterson Bros, both he and brother John quickly became prominent Melbourne artists, active in the cultural politics of the time.

The Paterson studio managed by Hugh became an artistic centre. Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher whose office was next door liked to drop in. This led, among other things, to the imposition of tariffs on imported paintings and the establishment of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board.

Ester Paterson was born in 1892, Betty Paterson in 1895 to Hugh and wife Elizabeth. Both were prodigies who played with, mixed with and trained with the elite of Melbourne's bohemian set. Both were talented artists, cartoonists and writers who went on to long artistic careers.

I think that the thing I notice most about their work are the lines, the colours and the simplicity. Their work is quite striking, part of the Art Deco scene. Betty in particular became artist by appointment to the flappers, both captured the resonance of the 1920s.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 2 August 2017. 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.