Richard Browne (1771 – 11 January 1824) was an artist and illustrator who was

transported ''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln. It is considered a lost film. Plot In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she w ...

from his native Ireland to what was then the

colony of New South Wales The Colony of New South Wales was a colony of the British Empire from 1788 to 1901, when it became a State of the Commonwealth of Australia. At its greatest extent, the colony of New South Wales included the present-day Australian states of New ...

, Australia. After his sentence was completed in

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

in 1817 he lived in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

selling

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

illustrations of natural history subjects — particularly birds — and of

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

Early life

Richard Browne was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1771. He was convicted and then transported in 1810 possibly for the crime of forgery.

Life in New South Wales

Richard Browne arrived at Sydney in July 1811 in the ''Providence.''

Newcastle

In October 1811 he was sent to Newcastle for committing a second offence and remained there until 1817. During this period he married, or formed a liaison with, fellow convict Sarah Coates who had been transported in the ''Wanstead'' in 1814. They had at least two daughters who were born in Newcastle: Mary P. (born c.1815) and Eliza (born c.1816.

Sydney

After 1817, Richard Browne spent the rest of his life in Sydney, where he was designated 'free by servitude’.

Career as an artist

Richard Browne - Killigrant - Google Art Project

In Newcastle, Browne met the commandant of Newcastle Lieutenant Thomas Skottowe. Skottowe was interested in natural history and commissioned Browne to create drawings of his collections to illustrate a manuscript entitled, ''Select Specimens From Nature of the / Birds Animals &c &c of New South Wales, Collected and Arranged by Thomas Skottowe Esqr. The Drawings By T.R. Browne. N.S.W. Newcastle New South Wales 1813''. (held

State Library of New South Wales The State Library of New South Wales, part of which is known as the Mitchell Library, is a large heritage-listed special collections, reference and research library open to the public and is one of the oldest libraries in Australia. Establish ...

) As with

Joseph Lycett Joseph Lycett (c.1774 – 1828) was a portrait and miniature painter, active in Australia. Transported to Australia for forging banknotes, Lycett found work in the colony as a painter specialised in topographical views of the major town ...

, Browne contributed many of the original watercolours for Major James Wallis' ''An historical account of the Colony of New South Wales'' which were engraved by Philip Slaeger. Richard Browne's most characteristic work is from to the emancipist part of his life between 1817 and 1821. His illustrations from this period focus on the Indigenous peoples of the Sydney area. Several of these are included in ''A collection of portraits, predominantly of Aborigines of New South Wales and Tasmania, ca. 1817–1849.'' In these illustrations Browne employed a more exaggerated caricature style which owed much to the silhouette portrait tradition. These illustrations were often sold as souvenirs in Sydney and appear to have reflected the demand of the time.

Personal life and Death

Richard Browne, had 6 children, Mary, Eliza, Esther, Anne, Sarah and William (born posthumously) He died in Sydney on 11 January 1824, according to the burial register of Sydneys

St Philip's Church ''Riceyman Steps'' is a novel by British novelist Arnold Bennett, first published in 1923 and winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It follows a year in the life of Henry Earlforward, a miserly second-hand bookshop ow ...

References

1776 births 1824 deaths Australian bird artists Australian illustrators Convicts transported to Australia {{Australia-artist-stub