William Joseph Wadham

Australian Politicians
watercolour
Originally inscribed on reverse with title but that this has been lost during reframing in 2009

SOLD

Wadham’s painting, Australian Politicians, probably dates from around 1887 when the artist appears to have been in Melbourne. It shows Australian men from various walks of life, gathered in a rustic,  public bar, listening to a speech being read by a politician. His  ‘side-kick’ seems to be reiterating the points being made while others  either listen with interest or seem to be about to interject. The scene is enlivened by telling details such as the sleeping dog, the sledgehammer, and the clock on the mantelpiece.  The painting provides excellent documentation of the physical interior of a hotel of the  period, with the dirt floor, the slab walls and the bar itself, as  well as evoking the social and political life of the period. It is tempting to speculate that the prominent politician may be Henry  Parkes. However, as yet we have been unable to find any images of Parkes which show him wearing reading glasses.  The subject of the painting is unusual, given that there are very few  existing paintings of Australian ‘political gatherings’. William Joseph Wadham was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1864. He exhibited  at the Walker Gallery at the age of 14 before emigrating to Australia  in 1885 with his brother Alfred Sinclair Wadham. (Alfred was also an  artist who signed his work ‘Alfred Sinclair’). The brothers spent some  time in Adelaide. An article in the Adelaide Advertiser on 21 July  1894 described their father, B. B. Wadham as ‘one of the leading  artists in the north of England’. William Joseph Wadham was elected  president of the Adelaide Easel Club in 1894. Throughout his life Wadham involved himself in the business of self- promotion and selling his own work, as well as selling the works of  others. An auction of his (and Sinclair’s) work took place in 1888 in  Adelaide, held by auctioneer James H. Parr. Works by the brothers  included Victorian, South Australian landscapes as well as English,  Welsh and Irish scenes. Wadham traveled widely, exhibiting in Brisbane and in Melbourne (He  exhibited two watercolour landscapes at the Victorian Academy Art in  1887). There is a record of a painting by Wadham of a New Zealand  geyser. (It was on loan to the Auckland Industrial & Mining Exhibition  in 1898). In 1897 Wadham was back in London, arranging an exhibition of  ‘colonial pictures’. He continued to move back and forward between the  UK and Australia, often bringing British works to sell here. He was in  London, buying works at auction, in 1920. The following year The  Year’s Art gave his address as the ‘Royal Colonial Institute’, London.  Wadham used the impressive-looking letters ‘RBC’ after his name which  stand for Royal British Colonial Society of Artists. On 18 August 1922 the Sydney Morning Herald announced: 

'A minor portion of the collection of modern English paintings exhibited by Mr William J.  Wadham, at the Wadham Art Gallery, Barrack  Street [Sydney], was sold at auction on the premises on Wednesday by Mr W. A. Little and McIlveen, Ltd., when there was a good attendance and about £1500 was realised… The gallery will remain freely open to visitors as before…'

The auction included works by well-known names such as Lord Leighton,  Sir John Millais, Sir Ernest Waterlow, T. Sidney Cooper, R.A., and so  on. There were also works by Wadham himself. Below one of his own  paintings in the catalogue, Loch Katrine, he included a quote,  apparently from The Times, 7 February, 1897: 

'Mr. Wadham has not been deterred by the difficulties of painting  mountain scenery – difficulties which have been too much for almost  every artist except Turner.'

There is just one problem with this quote: The 7th of February 1897  was a Sunday and The Times was not published on Sunday. A search of  the index for The Times produces no references to William Joseph Wadham.