John Michael Crossland

J. M. Crossland (1799 - 1858) Portrait painter, born in England. A resident of Adelaide, he was the most accomplished portrait painter in South Australia of the period.

portrait painter, was born in England and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London. He exhibited at both the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) between 1832 and 1845, showing portraits and Italian subject pictures at the former in 1832, 1833 and 1844. Portraits of its secretary and chaplain were painted for the St Ann’s Society, London.

Crossland and his family arrived at Port Adelaide on 21 February 1851 and settled in Adelaide, where he soon established a local reputation. Working in the fluent traditions of Late Georgian-Early Victorian portraiture, he was the most accomplished portrait painter in South Australia at this time and, after Ludwig Becker and William Strutt , the finest in any of the Australian colonies. He made his name with a series of portraits of Captain Charles Sturt , the explorer and artist. At least three versions survive (Art Gallery of South Australia, Legislative Council Chamber of the South Australian Parliament and National Portrait Gallery, London), the commissioned version for Parliament House being reported as recently completed in the Adelaide Observer of 12 March 1853.

One of his Captain Sturt – the Hero of Australian Exploration portraits was shown at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1857, together with his Portrait of Thomas Gilbert (now owned by the City of Adelaide). His paintings continued to feature in the society’s exhibitions even after Crossland’s death at Encounter Bay in 1858. His oil portraits of the late Reverend Thomas Quinton Stow and Mr William Giles were also exhibited posthumously, at the Stow Memorial Church Bazaar held at White’s rooms in December 1863.

Other eminent South Australians who sat for Crossland included Governor Sir Henry Young, Lady Young, Chief Justice Sir Charles Cooper, George Fife Angas (father of G.F. Angas ) and the Very Reverend James Farrell, Anglican Dean of Adelaide. The South Australian Register praised several of these 'fine likenesses’ on 16 October 1854, as well as Crossland’s portraits of lesser lights: John Brown, emigration agent, Thomas Gilbert, colonial storekeeper, and an unnamed 'aspirant for literary fame’. His portraits of two women (conventionally anonymous) were described as: 'a fine likeness of a lady whose placid countenance assures us we may venture to describe her as an elderly matron; and another equally good likeness of a married lady, who has scarcely begun to look matronly’. Moses Garlick, an Adelaide builder, and William Giles, the second manager of the South Australian Company, probably had their portraits painted too.

Crossland’s full-length portrait of the first resident commissioner of the province, James Hurtle Fisher, painted in late December 1854 (Parliament House, Adelaide), was praised in the South Australian Register on 27 and 28 December 1854 and 7 January 1855. It had cost 70 guineas, paid by public subscription. Its 'magnificent’ carved and gilded frame by David Culley (father of John ), said to be the most ambitious ever produced in the colony, received almost equal attention, having cost the astonishing sum of 50 guineas.

The scale and accomplishment of Crossland’s full- and half-length oil portraits of European settlers were novel to South Australia and suited the new confidence of a growing community, reflecting its ambitions and increasing wealth. But it is the pair of Aboriginal portraits in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection (National Library of Australia) – Nannultera, a Young Cricketer of the Natives’ Training Institution, Poonindie and Samuel Conwillan (Kandwillan), a Catechist of the Natives’ Training Institution, Poonindie , now firmly given to his hand – that are without doubt Crossland’s major works. Both were commissioned in 1854 by Archdeacon Matthew Hale, who paid only £6 5s for the portrait of Conwillan. This seems to have been a special price for a generally admired churchman who founded Poonindie with the aim of creating 'a Christian village of Australian natives, reclaimed from barbarism and trained to the duties of social Christian life’. Samuel Conwillan’s grave portrait with Bible may be read as commemorating the achievements of the mind, whereas Nannultera’s displays the complementary quality of bodily recreation in its healthiest and highest form in Hale’s eyes – the game of cricket.

Works:
Portrait of Nannultera, a young Poonindie cricketer 1854 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Nannultera was born into a culture suffering inexorable pressure from land-hungry colonists. By 1838, Governor Gawler was voicing what many colonists believed was the only hope for survival left to the Indigenous people. ‘We wish to make you happy’, he proclaimed. ‘But you cannot be happy unless you imitate good white men. Build huts, wear clothes, work and be useful. Above all … love God.’1
Archdeacon Mathew Hale sought to create the conditions for this ‘happiness’, establishing the Aboriginal Mission Institution of Poonindie near Port Lincoln in 1850. Cricket was introduced at the mission as a healthy recreation and useful part of the ‘civilising’ process. The Poonindie cricketers were considered the best in the district. On occasion they played in Adelaide and it is most likely on one of these visits in 1854 that Nannultera sat for his portrait.
Crossland accepted an uncharacteristically small fee for this work and its companion portrait of Samuel Conwillan, a lay preacher at Poonindie. He had exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists in London before migrating to South Australia in 1851, becoming society portraitist to eminent South Australians.
His Poonindie portraits are amongst the earliest depictions of Indigenous Australians appearing fully Europeanised and were commissioned by Hale in an attempt to show that colonisation had benefited the Indigenous population.
The portraits accompanied Hale back to England, where he died in 1895. That year government indifference and the greed of surrounding pastoralists saw the mission closed, its lands reallocated, and its inmates dispossessed once again.

Captain Charles Sturt 1853 Art Gallery of South Australia

Staffordshire bull terrier belonging to the Rev. John Gower 1851 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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