david coombe history
About the S.T. Gill Project
Samuel Thomas Gill (1818 - 1880), colonial artist, with a focus on the South Australian years and
covering his life and work from his arrival in South Australia at the end of 1839
up to his early time in the Victorian gold rush in 1852-53.
A project of original research presented in online formats.
In this article ...
Since 2016 I've been studying arguably Australia's most recognisable colonial artist – Samuel Thomas Gill (1818 - 1880). Recognised, if not by name, then by his many images used for historical illustration.
My focus here is on Gill's life and work from his arrival in South Australia at the end of 1839 up to his early time at the Victorian gold rush in 1852-53. This is a little bit further on in time than the reference work S.T. Gill, the South Australian years 1839-1852 (Appleyard, Fargher, Radford, 1986).
My original research supplements earlier work by Gill authorities – Sasha Grishin; Ron Appleyard, Barbara Fargher and Ron Radford; Keith Macrae Bowden and others. (See References.) However I diverge in particular from Appleyard and Radford in their dating and related conclusions.
I'm not a historian, let alone an art historian. The work in this project is not based on reputation, and must stand on its own – on evidence and argument. I do have other advantages.
My main advantage has been time and patience. I also brought analytical and computer skills. I followed my interests, including Trove, digitised mapping and database development.
I was motivated to illuminate an historical angle, rediscover lost context and, perhaps, grow biographical insight.
I hope this project will inform teachers of writers of history who use Gill's artwork to support their text.
While this project builds a narrative, its main strength is as an historical reference work. When complete, it will be a select catalogue of S.T. Gill's early colonial works from his arrival in South Australia at the end of 1839 up to his early time at the Victorian gold rush in 1852-53. A narrative starts with Gill's arrival: S.T. Gill - An Early Narrative, 1839 to 1842.
I came to this research interest through the 2016 exhibition S.T. Gill & his Audiences at the State Library of Victoria (SLV) and the National Library of Australia (NLA) curated by Professor Sasha Grishin who also authored the accompanying book. For those wanting an overview and appreciation of Gill's work and life I highly recommend Grishin's book.
My interest was particularly stirred by the controversial claim by the late scholar Babette Smith that Gill was a convict and not a free settler – a claim refuted by Grishin. I thought I had sufficient research skills to explore the controversy. Bravely and naïvely I embarked on a ten part blog coinciding with the Canberra leg of the exhibition. It turned out the convict argument was unsound. However by the end of the blog I'd seen gaps in our knowledge of Gill and a problem with the accepted timeline. I didn't have answers at the time but thought it worth my looking into.
I had several reasons for revisiting the work of Appleyard, et. al:
Although I reached different conclusions to Appleyard, his 1986 book has been a significant inspiration and I have constantly referenced it throughout my research. While not claiming so, the book is something of a catalogue raisonné and I reference Appleyard numbers in my catalogue. I also took Appleyard's detailed analysis of cross-references for the James Allen commission (Appendix A) as a model for my own analytical approach.
By extending my scope beyond Appleyard's South Australia and into Gill's earliest Victorian gold rush images I've found ongoing South Australian connections and resolved puzzles around his intercolonial move.
By necessity my research also embraces artistic contemporaries of Gill such as George French Angas (1822-1886), William Anderson Cawthorne (1824-1897) and Frederick Robert Nixon (1817-1860). You'll also find related material on 1840s South Australia including interactive maps.
I expect some of my conclusions are themselves controversial – especially those around Gill and Angas.
The critical content is a select catalogue of S.T. Gill's early colonial works. This catalogue is generally confined to what is readily accessible from public collecting institutions and can be thought of as an extra online layer sitting above their catalogues – a supra-catalogue. The catalogue is supported by related analytical articles and interactive maps showing artworks in geographical and historical context.
Web page articles may be thought of as:
Interactive maps are implemented using OpenStreetMap's uMap.
(There's more on Accessing Project Content below.)
In writing about the artist Samuel Thomas Gill, the challenge all have faced is an abundance of undated artworks and a lack of other primary historical sources. There are no known Gill diaries (Horrocks expedition aside), letters, account books, or colonial sketchbooks.
The most significant books on Gill (also see References) are those by:
The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1 (1966) predated these with an article focussing on Gill's known works. E. J. R. Morgan, 'Gill, Samuel Thomas (1818-1880)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gill-samuel-thomas-2096/text2639>, published first in hardcopy 1966.
Appleyard and Radford (1986) erred in dating Gill's series The Seasons and the Months to 1840-1842 after turning away from historical evidence for a date of 1847. (See: S.T. Gill and Art History's Wrong Turn.) One of the main outcomes of this project is to demonstrate the correctness of the 1847 date and identify the client and story behind the series.
Bowden (1971) was narrative in style, blending Gill's works with social history. His book listed known works in collections – including wash drawings – especially those in public collections. Unpublished Gill family material was the basis for information on the family. Bowden dated The Seasons and the Months to 1847.
Appleyard et al (1986) focussed on the South Australian years (1839 - 1852), supported an exhibition, and included an illustrated catalogue and a biographical outline (5 pages plus another 5 of endnotes). The book generally excluded the wash drawings. Appleyard and Radford redated The Seasons and the Months to 1840-1842 which helped fill a chronology but was in error.
Grishin (2015) gave an appreciation of the artist and his art over his full lifetime. His book accompanied a comprehensive exhibition curated by the author. The chapters (in chronological order) are vignette in style. He understandably relied on Appleyard et al. for the South Australian years and so likewise placed The Seasons and the Months in 1840-1842.
This project is partly biographical, but it is not a biography. Its scope is Gill's South Australian years (plus his early Victorian diggings work). In recovering the actual dating for The Seasons and the Months this project has a firmer basis for Gill's early biography.
The main content of this project is the Select Catalogue of Works. One purpose of this project is to add "why" to "what" and give the historical context for Gill's works and career. The catalogue is the main foundation for A Narrative.
The project is an interlinked collection of (web page) articles, some of which have a catalogue focus, others are narrative.
The time seemed right for a digital approach to discovery and presentation, to capitalise on the cataloguing and online availablility of the major holders of works (state and national libraries and galleries), to scour the digitised newspapers in Trove, and to incoporate interactive historical mapping.
I'm not an art historian. I'm applying scientific principles of observation, hypothesis and test; transparency and reproducibility. In the accompanying articles I present evidence, argument and opinion for others to test.
In my analysis I sometimes differ from previous authorities. Specifically I occasionally re-attribute authorship from other artists to Gill (with varying degrees of confidence). I explain the rational in these cases and note the artist as "Gill, S.T. (attr.)."
I've been building a personal research database of art works and events. I have categorised these with what may seem disparate data but which allows for dating and extraction of narrative. The database helps me place the works of Gill (and some other artists) in time, place and society. Much of the data is relational: people, places, locations, events, exhibitions, signature styles, picture devices, provenance, even theories. I interrogate the database so possible narratives can be tested, refined and extracted. This method has proved fruitful.
Gill's work was frequently topical and I've been able to recover contemporary context that's escaped memory in 180 years. I think of this as a place and time machine.
My growing research database currently has around 700 works from about a dozen collecting institutions. It includes over 3,000 dated events for context, 1,200 keywords and 14,000 keyword uses. From the database I also generate presentational content for both web pages and maps. This has the added advantage of supporting consistency in both data and presentation.
5 January 2026: this project is now subtantially complete.
I've discovered details of Gill's work that bring us a deeper understanding of his career trajectory, cleverness, cheekiness, opportunism, industriousness, persistence and luck.
I've compiled an album of analytical, reference and narrative material, one online article at a time, in no particular sequence. Over time they became increasingly interlinked with each other.
The narrative is complete from 1839 to March 1853. There is currently an intentional gap for Gill's presence on the Horrocks expedition in July to September 1846, as this is well covered by his own diary as published in the newspaper after his return.
The table below shows approximate catalogue progress on original works (not prints) by owner institution:
Lithographs are included in the catalogue, however as they maye be held by multiple institutions, they are not included in this table. (Updated 2026-01-05.)
| Owner | Catalogued | To be Catalogued | Other Main Listing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) | 89 | 4 | 20 |
| British Museum (BM) | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Burra Regional Art Gallery (Burra RAG) | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Flinders University (Flinders) | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| National Gallery of Australia (NGA) | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| National Library of Australia (NLA) | 132 | 1 | 20 |
| Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Royal Agricultural and Horticural Society of South Australia (RAHSSA) | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| South Australian Museum (SAM) | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) | 22 | 0 | 8 |
| Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW-DG) | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW-DL) | 4 | 0 | 6 |
| Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW-M) | 18 | 0 | 23 |
| State Library of South Australia (SLSA) | 16 | 2 | 6 |
| State Library Victoria (SLV) | 6 | 0 | 3 |
| University of Adelaide (UA) | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| TOTAL | 296 | 7 | 99 |
See the S.T. Gill project index page for all the main articles in order of posting, beginning with the most recent.
You can also access project content by place (maps), time (catalogue of works and chronological display) or artistic subject through Indexes, Catalogue, Lists, Status, Help, including:
This project would not be possible without the digitised resources provided by the collecting institutions and the newspapers of NLA's Trove. Institutions have also been generous in letting me inspect works (especially the undigitised backs) and in sourcing information from their acquisition files (especially for acquisition and provenance information).
I am personally indebted to historian Frank Campbell who encouraged me to pursue this interest. We initially made contact over the convict controversy and Frank pursued his own angle with S.T. Gill: A Phony Controversy. Around this time Frank wrote Face value : the assassination of portrait painting by photography, 1850-1870 : Richard Noble and his circle : including a catalogue raisonné of Richard Noble. We occasionally corresponded by email, but an ISP change resulted in us losing contact. I don't think we imagined how far this interest would go. Thank you Frank!
David Coombe, 2021-2026. Updated 5 January 2026. | text copyright (except where indicated).
CITE THIS: David Coombe, 2021-2025, S.T. Gill - About the Project, accessed dd mmm yyyy, <https://coombe.id.au/S_T_Gill/about.htm>