William Strutt

William Strutt ( born July 3, 1825 Teignmouth, † January 3, 1915 in Wadhurst, East Sussex ) was an English artist and painter. He lived and worked in Australia and devoted himself to portrait and history painting.

Life and work

William Strutt grew up in a family of artists on his grandfather Joseph Strutt was a writer and painter, his father William Thomas Strutt dealt with the miniature painting. William Strutt studied in England and, inter alia, in Paris. In July 1850 he traveled to Australia, where he eventually married. In Melbourne, he first worked as an illustrator at the Australian Magazine. Then Strutt worked, in the course of the former gold rush in Australia, eighteen months as a gold digger in the area around Ballarat, but it had little success, which is why he finally returned in 1853 to Melbourne. From then on, he devoted himself, even after returning to his English home in 1862, his artistic work and made ​​a name for himself in the artistic circles. The portrait and history painter of the work included matters with then current topics, as for example the Black Thursday bushfires, the bush fire in the February 1851 Australia ravaged. This event led to one of the most famous works Strutt, the oil painting Black Thursday, February 6th, which today is located in the State Library of Victoria. He has completed several paintings to the expedition of Burke and Wills, more work has among other things Australia's well-known personalities of that time to the subject. A major part of his work is now in the National Library of Australia.

Gallery

William Strutt, Portrait of Robert O'Hara Burke, 1862

Secondary literature

• William Strutt, The Australian journal of William Strutt, ARA, 1850-1862
• Heather Curnow, The life & art of William Strutt, 1825-1915
• William Strutt, Victoria the golden: scenes, sketches and jottings from nature, 1850-1862
• William Strutt, Cooey, or, The trackers of Glenferry (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1989).