Gill, Samuel Thomas (1818-1880), was an Australian artist whose work provides a valuable pictorial record of the life of Australia’s gold miners during the 1850’s. He also captured the life of the bush in the 1870’s with a series of paintings of Aboriginal people and new settlers.
Gill was born on May 21, 1818, in Perriton, Somerset, England and tutored by his father, Samuel Gill, and by teachers in Plymouth, Devon. He worked as a draftsman and water-color painter at a gallery in London before leaving for South Australia in 1839. Gill opened a studio in Adelaide in 1840. He became well known in Adelaide for his water colors of scenes in the city. He acted as unpaid official artist for an expedition led by the Australian explorer John A. Horrocks from 1844 to 1846. Gill’s art provides an important social and geological record of South Australia during the 1840’s. A well-known example is his water color Sturt’s Overland Expedition Leaving Adelaide, August 10th, 1844. Gill also assembled a volume of profiles called Heads of the People (1849). In 1852, Gill left Adelaide for the gold fields of the Australian state of Victoria. He became widely known for his lithographs of the colorful life on the gold fields. His sketches show an unusual ability to assess and portray character. Gill suffered from alcoholism and eventually died in poverty on Oct. 27, 1880.
