Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

England, UK

Biography

watercolourist, sketcher, architect, surveyor, engineer and public servant, was born in England, son of the architect Joseph Kay, a founding member of the (Royal) Institute of British Architects, and Sarah Henrietta, daughter of the distinguished Gothic Revival architect William Porden. He was a nephew of Sir John Franklin’s first wife, Eleanor Anne Porden. Kay travelled throughout England working as an architect for his father. Later he worked both for private firms and the British government in New Brunswick, then was invited to Van Diemen’s Land by Governor Franklin to be the colonial architect. He arrived at Hobart Town on 20 May 1842. Kay’s official status was always controversial and insecure, partly due to charges of nepotism and the architectural tastes of succeeding governors, but mainly because his appointment had not originated in London. Nevertheless, he designed many public buildings in Hobart, including the extant symmetrical Tudor-style Lands Department Building (originally St Mary’s Hospital, begun 1847), the Supreme Court and the small but elaborate Gothic Revival Eardley-Wilmot memorial (1850). He erected several private houses, including his own Italianate home, Barrington Lodge, Newtown (c.1850). The asymmetrical Tudor-style New Government House, Hobart (1853-58), which Trollope called the 'best belonging to any English colony’, is undoubtedly his major work. Kay, his wife Clara Ann Elwall, whom he had married on 3 April 1845, and their daughter visited England between March 1853 and November 1854, Kay being on half pay owing to deteriorating eyesight. In London he ordered many of the fittings for the New Government House before returning. His sight continued to deteriorate and on 31 December 1858 he was retired on a pension. On 3 February he sailed for England. The date of his death is unknown but is presumed to have been in the early 1870s; his pension was still being paid in 1870 and later in the decade his wife is said to have returned to Tasmania and resumed her profession of governess. Along with G.T.W.B. Boyes , James Burnett , P.G. Fraser , Bishop Nixon , Francis Simpkinson and others, W.P. Kay was a follower of John Skinner Prout and belonged to a sketching club Prout had initiated. He was secretary of the organising committees for the 1845 and 1846 Hobart Town art exhibitions and on the committee for the Art-Treasures Exhibition in 1858. At the 1845 exhibition he showed Circular Head, on Entering Eastern Bay and Circular Head, Taken from the Park of the Commissioner of the Van Diemen’s Land Company (presumed to be the watercolour in Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania. Hobart). A review published in the Hobart Town Courier on 9 January 1845 commented: 'These views are well executed, and the perspective of that taken from the land very correct, the colouring true to nature, and both display much care and ability’. The Hobart Town Advertiser 's reviewer also stated that the views were 'truly and accurately given’. Early in 1846 Kay was one of the 'party of gentlemen’ who accompanied Prout on a sketching tour up the east coast of Tasmania through St Mary’s Pass and Fingal Valley to Longford and back to Hobart Town. In that year’s exhibition he showed The Bishop’s Craig (The Schoutens) , produced on the trip, George Town Light House (Sunset) and Bellevue, Hobart Town , all watercolours, while his friend and fellow sketcher P.G. Fraser exhibited Kay’s drawing Land Storm . The Colonial Times of 26 June 1846 claimed that 'The water-colour drawings disappointed us with but a few exceptions … Amongst the best is … No 74, the Bishop’s Craig, W.P. Kay’, while the Hobart Town Advertiser commented more equivocally: 'The lighthouse and other scenes in watercolour, by Mr. Kay, evince talent, the colouring is rather florid, but the effect is rich and the shading is soft and produces good effect’. Kay showed Light House, Low Head, at the Entrance of the River Tamar, Tasmania in the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition and also lent works by other artists from his collection, including a sketch by Simpkinson. Writers: Brown, Tony Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1809

Summary

Invited to the position of colonial architect by his uncle, the governor of Tasmania, William Porden Kay designed many of the public buildings in Hobart. He was also an accomplished watercolourist and sketcher, producing many landscape paintings.

Gender

Male

Died

c.1870

Age at death

61