SAMUEL ELYARD (1817 - 1910)

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Samuel Elyard was an important, British-born Australian Colonial painter and photographer. In his early years he became acquainted with acclaimed Colonial artist and mentor, Conrad Martens, and also John Skinner Prout, under whom he studied in the early 1840’s. Elyard’s preferred medium was watercolour and, like Prout, his preferred subject matters were picturesque buildings, street scenes and landscapes. Elyard was an innovative artist and can be said to be an early starter in the use of a relatively new medium, and using quality watercolours painted on a very large scale. He painted en-plein-air years before this was common practice by Australian artists, who only regularly painted direct from nature from the 1880’s, and as he left England too young to remember or be influenced by the light and colours of the English landscape he could be said to be one of the first Australian artists to capture, in watercolour, the land, light and colours of Australia. His works are commonplace in important National Collections for their significant historical and cultural value as some of the earliest depictions of the new colony.

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