Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Kent St. Sydney

Biography

John Mitchell Cantle, painter and illustrator, was active in Sydney in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cantle’s essential lifetime work consists of several hundred watercolour and gouache paintings of birds. Made with great attention to detail, including date, place and size, they are scrupulously annotated. Cantle also worked in conjunction with the Australian Museum, Sydney, and some of his works are of museum specimens, including a few non-Australian birds. Most were sketched in the wild in the Sydney area, but also throughout eastern New South Wales while he was working as a railway surveyor. Cantle is also known for his series of ornithological postcards of Australian birds, which include comic compositions. A watercolour, or possibly gouache, painting of birds bathing is held in a private collection and is presumably an original for one of his postcards. It was exhibited at the RAS in 1883. Other exhibitions include the Third Annual Exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales to which Cantle sent five pictures, the colouring of which was described as “very crude” by the Sydney Morning Herald. His work Hard Pressed, however, received a favourable review: “Hard Pressed shows promise for the drawing is correct and distance good, and the story easily intelligible” (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1883, p.11). A single catalogued collection of 228 Cantle bird paintings is held in a private Melbourne collection. The works date from 1887 to 1918, but the majority were completed between 1887 and 1895. Other paintings belong to his descendants. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography. Writers: Kerr, Joan fjcamp Date written: 1996 Last updated: 2012

Born

b. 24 October 1849

Summary

Late colonial era ornithological painter, illustrator, cartoonist and postcard designer. One major catalogued private collection of Cantle's ornithological paintings exists, the works each annotated and dating between 1887 and 1918 with the majority executed between 1887 and 1895.

Gender

Male

Died

11-Jun-19

Age at death

70