Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Exeter, Devon, England, UK

Biography

sketcher and surveyor, appears to have come to Sydney from Exeter, Devon, in the late 1840s. He took drawing lessons from Conrad Martens at Sydney in 1848. His earliest known works are two crude initialled undated sketches (Mitchell Library [ML]), a pen-and-ink Stroud, Port Stephens and a pen, ink and watercolour Tamworth, Peel’s River both inscribed 'J.C. Willis in the late forties’. In October and again in November 1853 Willis applied for employment as a draughtsman in the Surveyor-General’s Office. The latter must have been successful for he subsequently worked as a government surveyor. On 20 January 1855, Willis inscribed a watercolour View of Sydney Harbour from the North Shore (painted in 1854) for his father, B.W. Willis. Another version is signed 'C. Martens’ in red paint, but the Mitchell Library considers it unlikely to be this artist’s work.. Similar watercolour views of 1855-56, variously signed 'J. Willis’ and 'J.A.C.W.’, include the charming St Mary the Virgin, Allyn River (1856, watercolour, ML), which depicts the little stone church on the Paterson River designed by Bishop W.G. Broughton (with some help from an English pattern-book) and an accompanying pencil view of its Gothic Revival interior. When elected an officer of the NSW Academy of Art in May 1871, Willis’s 'admirable pictorial contributions to the late work published on the colony’ was praised by the members. He sent five watercolours to the academy’s first exhibition in 1872: The Gap at the Kurrajong ('perhaps the best’), View of Bondi , View in North Devon , The Lady Chapel at Exeter Cathedral and Crossing the Ford . Similar watercolour views were entered in subsequent exhibitions; in 1875 he was awarded a certificate of merit for Catumble Mountains, near Wellington, New South Wales . As a member of the Academy’s sketching and photography camps at Grose River, Willis’s 'really faithful delineation of the Govett’s Leap gorge as seen from above’ was praised by the chief instigator Eccleston du Faur at the Academy’s conversazione on 10 November 1875, and his panoramic drawing in which 'every prominent point and height and depth was determined by the theodolite’ was judged the major work produced on the first camp ( W.C. Piguenit was the subsequent star). It was sent to the following year’s exhibition together with a watercolour of the Grose Valley Willis had presumably worked up from it. The watercolour was awarded a certificate of merit, while the drawing was lithographed by S.T. Leigh for distribution to all subscribers to the Academy’s 1876 art union. Over 200 names had been collected by May and because of the demand it was sent out rather belatedly. G.H. Reid’s An Essay on New South Wales, the Mother Colony of the Australias (Sydney: Government Printer, 1876) included a very long folding panoramic bird’s-eye view of 'The Harbour of Port Jackson & City of Sydney… drawn from nature by James A.C. Willis’ (180 × 1585mm, with the water in lithographed colour). Michaael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers, Adelaide had it for sale at $450 in their Recent Acquisitions List 73 (2001). Primarily a surveyor, Willis always retained his amateur status as a painter and confined himself to pencil and watercolour drawings. The Gap, Wheeny Creek, Kurrajong , shown in the New South Wales Court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition, was judged 'an ambitious effort for an amateur’ by the Sydney Mail critic, though not an entirely successful one. The Dixson Library holds an album of thirty-one of Willis’s watercolour views of rural New South Wales (including Tumut, Albury and Mudgee) dated 1881-86. Willis lived at Atherfield, Darling Point Road, Woollahra. His last known work, signed and dated 1896, is a view from his home (ML). Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. c.1834

Summary

Colonial male surveyor whose amateur watercolour drawings of landscapes received certificates of merit and were published as lithographs.

Gender

Male

Died

14 September 1898

Age at death

64