W. B. GOULD

English 1803–53
worked in Australia 1827–53

Before his conviction and transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, William Buelow Gould worked as a draftsman for Rudolf Ackermann, the London publisher and print seller, and as a china painter in Staffordshire. He served his sentence in Hobart Town, Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur and, between bouts of drinking and further run-ins with the law, returned to his art. His Australian oeuvre includes natural-history subjects, portraits and landscapes, but his reputation hangs on his still lifes. He was, in fact, the only early artist in Van Diemen’s Land to specialise in still-life painting in oils.

Gould could be a very careful botanical artist, as his watercolour studies show, and had works published in Curtis’ Botanical Magazine, under the name of Dr James Scott, to whom he was assigned at the time. In his still lifes, however, the painting becomes more schematic and generalised, harking back perhaps to his china-painting days, or to his recent employment as a coach-painter and scene-painter in Launceston.

Flowers and fruit, 1842, is a classic Gould production, juxtaposing a vase of flowers with a basket of fruit. The painting is inscribed ‘W. Gould, Painter, 1842’, indicating it was painted in Hobart Town.

Terence Lane