Edmund Edgar, engraver and portrait painter, was convicted of robbery in London in 1825 and sentenced to transportation for life. When he reached Sydney in 1826 he was assigned to the artist Augustus Earle, who was in need of a skilled printmaker's assistance with the production of his Views in Australia – a folio of the first lithographic views printed in the colony. In the late 1820s, Edgar worked for a time as a teacher at Gilchrist's School for boys and was recalled by one student as being 'glad to impart a knowledge of Art to anyone who had a taste for it'. Edgar received a ticket of leave in 1838 and a full pardon in 1844. He died a pauper in the Sydney Benevolent Asylum ten years later.
This portrait is one of Edgar's very few known surviving works. It depicts Richard Fitzgerald (1772–1840), who was transported to New South Wales in 1791 and who, having attained his freedom, served in a number of high-ranking public service roles in colonial Sydney. The work was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 2010 from the estate of one of Fitzgerald's descendants.
Gift in memory of Richard Kelynack Evans 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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