DUTERREAU, BENJAMIN (17671851)

was of French descent and was born in London in 1767. He worked as an engraver and in 1790 did two coloured stipple engravings after Morland, "The Farmer's Door" and "The Squire's Door". Taking up painting, between 1817 and 1823 he exhibited six portraits at Royal Academy exhibitions, and he also exhibited three genre pieces at the British Institution about the same period. Emigrating to Western Australia in his sixty-fifth year he decided not to stay, and went on to Hobart, where he arrived with his daughter in August 1832. He lived at the corner of Campbell and Patrick-streets, and practised as a portrait painter. In 1835 he did some etchings of aborigines, the first examples of that craft to be done in Australia. His best-known painting "The Conciliation" is in the Hobart gallery with a self-portrait and other works, including some modelling in relief. A large landscape is in the Beattie collection at Launceston, and he is also represented in the Dixson collection at Sydney. Duterreau died at Hobart in 1851.