Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

North Esk River , Van Diemen's Land

Biography

painter, sketcher and surveyor, was born on 20 September 1833 at North Esk, Van Diemen’s Land where his father, George Hemming Stuart, had 640 acres on the North Esk River which he called Barrowville. His mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of the painter Frederick Garling . By 1834 the family had moved to Sydney. In 1838 his father was killed in a carriage accident while travelling to Windsor from Richmond where he had been attending a ball, leaving Elizabeth Stuart with the job of raising Clarendon and his younger brother and sister. Financial assistance to supplement her own small inheritance would probably have been provided by the Garling grandfather. It allowed young Stuart to attend St James’s Church of England School in Sydney, together with his cousin Frederick Augustus Garling . Stuart joined the General Post Office as a clerk in 1852 but resigned on 30 October 1855 to take up a temporary draughting position with the Surveyor-General’s Department. He was appointed a second-class surveyor in 1858 and proceeded, with A.F. Wood and I. Rowland, to carry out surveys in the Rockhampton and Port Curtis (Gladstone) areas of Queensland, assisting District Surveyor Wood with feature surveys, road locations and the laying out of towns. He married Sophia Elvina Poingdestre on 24 August 1859 in Sydney. A year later their only child, Louisa Eleanor Maria, was born in Rockhampton. In March 1861 Stuart was sent to Port Denison in the Jeanie Dove with instructions from Queensland’s Surveyor-General A.C. Gregory to lay out a town there; it was named Bowen after Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Fergusson Bowen. In January 1863, while shooting ducks near his survey camp, Stuart’s gun exploded blowing away part of his left hand. Six weeks later he was back at work. In 1864 he laid out the town of Wickham at the mouth of the Burdekin River. He took an active part in community affairs, serving on the Bowen Hospital Committee and reading the lessons at Church of England services. Later in 1864 he surveyed the town of Dalrymple, and the following year he was sent to survey a town at Cleveland Bay. Due to prevailing economic conditions Stuart and other senior surveyors of the Survey Department were retrenched in 1867. The following year he was declared insolvent and returned to Sydney. After a short stay he came back to Queensland, this time to the newly-discovered Upper Mary River goldfield at Gympie, where he was appointed gold commissioner in June 1868, a position he did not keep for long partly because his lordly manner annoyed the local miners. He carried out numerous surveys, both land and mining, and at one time was a member of the local mining court. He showed much interest in the Mining Regulation and Education Bill of 1873, as evidenced by articles in the Gympie Times . While in Gympie he was instrumental in the formation of the Gympie Museum and Scientific Institute. The Gympie sojourn, however, was fraught with conflict and in 1875 Stuart returned to Sydney and practised for a time as a private surveyor. He continued his scientific interests and was a member of the Royal Geographical Society of NSW for some years. In 1878 he became founding chairman of the English Church Union in Sydney and over the years wrote many well-informed articles on church doctrine. By 1887 cutbacks in the Survey Department had forced him to join the staff at Bathurst Gaol as a clerk and schoolmaster. His final position, from which he retired in 1892, was that of clerk at the Sydney Gaol. Stuart’s early survey plans for the Rockhampton, Bowen, Burdekin and Gympie areas are frequently decorated with fine views of the places he was surveying, often including Aboriginal tribal groups (Surveying Museum, Department of Mapping and Surveying, Brisbane). For instance, his Plan of the Town of Bowen, Port Denison, District of Kennedy 1861 has a vignette of Port Denison at the base, with annotated landmark features and four silhouetted figures of Aborigines hunting in the foreground. More elaborate drawings include Expidition [sic] Range from Mt McIntosh and Landing Place Noosa River (July 1870). He was awarded a certificate of merit for a watercolour of the Noosa area shown at the 1874 Gympie Exhibition. Most of his work depicts scenes from locations close to his surveys, eg two pencil sketches of Bowen dated 1861 in a scrapbook held at the Oxley Library. Back at Sydney Stuart exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1876 and later (1883-84) with the Art Society of New South Wales. Govett’s Gorge , shown in the society’s exhibition at the Town Hall in 1883, was commended by the Sydney Morning Herald . Even the Bulletin 's art critic, who rarely had a good word for any painting, called it a noble picture despite joking about the subject which 'consists mostly of abyss. This is the Abyss-inian school’. Later that year Stuart showed A Bit of Salisbury, England at the society’s annual exhibition; the following year he was represented by a watercolour view of Salisbury Cathedral Close and a sketch of Durham Cathedral – possibly copies rather than the result of a trip. All were favourably reviewed. He had two works in the society’s Black and White Exhibition held in April 1884. While the view of Government House and Fort Macquarie was thought 'well-drawn and fairly coloured’, his other subject, The Outlaw’s Sister ', was far less liked by the Herald 's critic: The sister of the Kellys, the Victorian bushrangers, is shown on a spindle-shanked horse and watching with considerable intensity the movements of some troopers … The scenery is characteristically typical of the Australian bush, but the depth of colouring is deficient and one cannot help deploring that the artist has attempted to immortalize so undesirable a character. Stuart died at his Sydney home, Rockwood, in 1912 and was buried beside his mother in Waverley Cemetery. Writers: Kitson, W. S. Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 20 September 1833

Summary

Stuart's artistic endeavours seem to have been borne out of his position as a surveyor. Some of his plans were decorated with the places he surveyed and often included Aboriginal tribal groups.

Gender

Male

Died

1912

Age at death

79