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