Samuel Thomas Gill

S. T. (Samuel Thomas) Gill (18 May 1818 – 27 October 1880), also known by his signature S.T.G., was an English-born Australian artist.

Gill was born in Periton, Minehead, Somerset, England, son of the Reverend Samuel Gill, a Baptist minister, and his first wife, Winifred Oke. Rev. Gill became the headmaster of a school at Plymouth, where the son was first educated, then he continued to Dr Seabrook's Academy, Plymouth. Having moved to London, Gill was employed as a draughtsman and watercolour painter by the Hubard Profile Gallery, before departing for the colony of South Australia in 1839 with his parents, arriving December 17.[1]

"For three quarters of a century, until Donald Friend, Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley, ST Gill had the sharpest in the South. He recorded with sprightly directness the social activities of the Colony"

Samuel Thomas Gill (or S.T. Gill) arrived in Adelaide, aged 21 and established a studio in 1840, and called for those 'desirous of obtaining a correct likeness' of themselves and their families, friends, animals and residences to contact him. His activities soon expanded to include street scenes and public events, including the newly discovered copper mines at Burra Burra as well as the departure of Charles Sturt's expedition for the interior on 8 October 1844. His sketching tours of the districts surrounding Adelaide, produced a number of watercolours.

Gill was one of the inhabitants in Melbourne to take interest in photography - ordering a daguerreotype camera and the other necessary equipment in 1846, setting up as a professional photographer. With public interest in the new medium not forthcoming, Gill sold his camera to Robert Hall prior to his departure with John Horrocks' expedition northwards to the Flinders Ranges later in 1846. Horrocks, the first settler of South Australia's Clare Valley, mounted a small expedition to search for suitable farming land in the country northwest of Mount Arden in the southern Flinders Ranges. Gill's watercolours and pencil sketches provide a narrative of this fateful trip, which saw Horrocks die after being accidentally shot. In January 1847 Gill raffled some sketches made by him on the journey, and in February an exhibition of pictures was held in Adelaide of which he appears to have been the organizer. In 1849 he published Heads of the People, 12 lithographic sketches of South Australian colonists.

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