Sketch portrait of Alexander Campbell Onslow 1896

by Tom Roberts (1856-1931)

Purchased with donated funds 2006

Sir Alexander Campbell Onslow (1842-1908), judge, was educated at Cambridge and practised law in England before being appointed attorney general of British Honduras in 1878. In 1880, he arrived in Western Australia, then under the governorship of William Robinson, to become attorney general there. Suffering ill health almost from the day he arrived, he took his seat as chief justice in 1883. By 1884 he had severely antagonised the new governor, Broome. Tensions between them involving interpretation of Colonial Office instructions escalated until, in 1887, Broome interdicted Onslow from the exercise of his office. Onslow became a hero to anti-government factions, who burned Broome in effigy and were jubilant when the Colonial Office lifted Onslow’s suspension. He returned to the bench in May 1888, but fell into another imbroglio when the proprietors of the West Australian and the Western Mail accused him of open prejudice against them. Broome held an inquiry in Executive Council, at which Onslow defended himself, but there was no outcome. After other avenues of inquiry were canvassed unsuccessfully, the matter was passed to the Legislative Council, which found that Onslow’s occupancy of his present position was an impediment to ‘peace and harmony’ in the colony. Onslow took nearly a year’s leave. However, he returned to the bench in 1891, welcomed by the reinstated Robinson and a conciliatory West Australian. Throughout his remaining years in office, he discharged his duties competently. Retiring in ill health in 1901, he returned to England for the last seven years of his life. 

Onslow’s brother Arthur, who had grown up in Elizabeth Bay with their grandfather, naturalist, colonial secretary and landowner Alexander McLeay, married Elizabeth Macarthur, who changed her name to Macarthur-Onslow. They lived at Camden Park, and he held the seat of Camden in the Legislative Assembly. 

Tom Roberts came to Australia from England at the age of 13, but returned to study art in London. He arrived back in Melbourne in 1885 and established a successful portrait practice. At the same time, he began to paint outdoors with a number of other artists, including Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton, who came to be known as the ‘Heidelberg School’. Roberts gained a reputation as the ‘father of Australian landscape painting’, although forty per cent of his known works are portraits.  In 1900, four years after this portrait was painted, he exhibited 23 ‘Familiar Faces and Figures’, oil portraits on wooden panels that comprised a kind of prototype national portrait gallery. 

 

This picture of Onslow appears to be a life sketch for a more formal commission that seems never to have eventuated. According to information provided by Sotheby’s, it was probably painted in Sydney, where Onslow received his KB in 1895, and where Roberts may have met him through judicial or musical connections. 

 

The information about Onslow on this page is based on E. K. Braybrooke, ‘Onslow, Sir Alexander Campbell (1842 - 1908)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp 367-369.