Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/john-thompson

Birth Place

England, UK

Biography

sketcher and surveyor, was born in England on 3 September 1800, son of John Wyatt Thompson, a miniature painter. In 1827 he was appointed principal draughtsman to the New South Wales Surveyor-General’s Department at Sydney under T.L. Mitchell . He married Annie Mary (Marie), eldest of the four daughters of Charles and Ann Mary Windeyer, in St James’s Church of England, Sydney, on 11 February 1830; they had two sons and seven daughters. In a letter from Sydney dated 30 April 1830, Annie wrote to her cousin of their six weeks’ honeymoon in a cottage in the bush, describing her husband as 'tall and thin’ and mentioning that he had received a land grant of 100 acres which he had selected near her father’s property, Tomago, on the Hunter River. In November 1831 Thompson was writing home that Mitchell and 'self are very thick now—he does little without consulting me’, while in February 1834 he was telling his family that he was earning an annual salary of £445, 'a pretty good one’. Over the years, however, he became dissatisfied with his position. In late 1851 he wrote: 'I have the same salary I had fifteen years ago and I see no prospect of any change’. Thompson’s book of views (Dixson Library), drawn in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land between 1827 and 1832, contains nine pencil and four wash drawings. Most appear to be the products of leisure moments on official surveying expeditions, including those done on his 1829 visit to Van Diemen’s Land where he inspected the Van Diemen’s Land Company’s establishment in the north. An east view of Sydney and scenes of Botany Bay are included. Two watercolour portraits of the Tasmanian Aborigines Trukanini and Wourredy are either by Thomas Bock or copies. The Mitchell Library holds two pencil drawings and three watercolours of other rural scenes. Sir William Dixson stated that Thompson drew views of the New England district but these were undoubtedly the work of Edward Thomson . John Thompson was having problems with his eyes in the early 1830s and attributed the improvement he noticed in January 1834 'to my not drawing or using them much at night’. He seems virtually to have stopped sketching after 1832 and few later sketches are known. As a colonial correspondent for John Claudius Loudon’s early magazines of architecture and gardening, he provided a plan of Alexander Macleay’s splendid garden at Elizabeth Bay for Loudon’s Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (London 1838). A letter to his father dated 26 January 1843 is headed with a pencil sketch of the harbour view from the windows of the Thompsons’ home at 110 William Street, Woolloomooloo (where they had moved in 1836), and a rough plan of the house and garden is enclosed. The design was based on an Italianate house illustrated in the 1842 supplement to Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture , the most popular pattern-book in the colony at the time and also used by Thompson’s friend, Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis, for the plan (although not the elevation) of Lewis’s own Richmond Villa. The Sydney architect brothers Ambrose and Edward Hallen were also known to his family at home; John retailed some gossip about them giving up architecture for commerce in an 1834 letter. He also knew the visiting English painter Marshall Claxton . Despite his obvious competence in drawing, Thompson’s primary leisure interests were scientific and literary. In 1846 he was intending to publish his theories on the elevation of continents from the sea-bed, researched during his years in Australia, hoping that this would bring acknowledgement and financial rewards to free him from 'the vile drudgery and slavery which I still have to bear after a service of twenty years’. These hopes were not fulfilled but the following year he was granted a salary increase of £100 and appointed deputy surveyor-general. He occupied this position until 1859, then was forced to retire after refusing to survey the Port Curtis district because of ill-health. He died at his Woolloomooloo home on 9 May 1861, survived by his wife. His obituary stated that he had 'nearly completed, with a view to publication in the Herald , an elaborate essay on Colonial Architecture having especial reference to the competitive designs for our new Houses of Parliament and Government Offices, in which some novel principles as to ornamentation are embodied’ but, if ever published, this has not been located. A charcoal portrait of Thompson by Charles Rodius is in the Mitchell Library. Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 3 September 1800

Summary

A competent sketcher, Thompson's book of views, drawn in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land between 1827 and 1832, appear mostly to be the products of leisure moments on official surveying expeditions.

Gender

Male

Died

9 May 1861

Age at death

61