Life History

Notes

• Although we know very little about the Cornish painter Robert Burnard, the following biographical skeleton is at least intact: Burnard was born in 1799 or 1800 in Laneast, about six miles from Launceston in Cornwall, the son of Richard Parnell Burnard and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Westlake). We do not know Richard Burnard's profession, nor do we know anything about Robert Burnard's childhood. A later source tells us that he was self-taught, and that in adult life he lived and worked in Francis Street, Truro. Burnard married Jane Chapman on 8 October 1822, at Altarnun, near Laneast. Following her death and that of the eldest of their four children, Charles, both in 1831, Burnard remarried the following year. His second wife was Elizabeth (nee Stodden), and in due course they had a further ten children. (8)
  
  In late August 1839, the rapidly multiplying Burnards applied for and were granted assisted free passage to the new colony of South Australia. On 29 October, they sailed from Plymouth aboard the Java. That four-month voyage was notorious: the ship was terribly overcrowded, and between thirty and fifty of the 464 passengers had died of malnutrition, starvation or disease by the time the Java limped into Holdfast Bay on 6 February 1840. A Royal Commission and an inquiry by the South Australian medical board, to which Robert Burnard gave evidence, (9) both censured the ship's master, Captain Alexander Duthie, and the two doctors on board. The Burnards were lucky. With six children they eventually settled in the Adelaide suburb of Plympton, surrounded by Cornish neighbours. (10)
  
  When Burnard applied for free passage, assisted migrants had to be 'of useful occupations' and 'of sound body not less than fifteen and not more than thirty years of age and married. The rule as to age is occasionally departed from in favour of the parents of large families'. The more practical aspects of his profession, together with the encouraging size of Burnard's family, were enough for Mr Isaac Latimer, the South Australian colonisation commissioners' agent at Truro, to overlook the matter of Burnard's age (thirty eight) and grant him eight berths on the Java. (11) For his part, Burnard was clearly turning his back on his career as an artist: upon arriving in Adelaide he set up in partnership with his eldest son a house-painting business in Leigh Street. That business evolved into Burnard & Draysey, Painters, Plumbers, Glaziers, and Paper Hangers, of Pirie Street, listed in two Adelaide directories printed in 1856. (12)
  
  According to The Dictionary of Australian Artists, Robert Burnard must have died by 1846 or, at the latest, January or February 1847, when the reviewer of the first 'exhibition of pictures, the works of colonial artists' in Adelaide noted that a painting by Burnard, Fruit (no. 27) (untraced), and another picture by the colony's founder, Colonel William Light (1786-1839), were 'not only beautiful in themselves but to old colonists most valuable as relics of departed friends'. (13) This reference is a mystery because the South Australian register of deaths clearly shows that Robert Burnard, aged 76, died in Adelaide on 13 April 1876, and lies buried in the West Terrace Cemetery. Presumably the newspaper was simply mistaken. As a result, our Robert Burnard has been much confused with the eldest surviving son of his first marriage, Robert junior (1825-74), who is said to have also painted portraits and still lifes in Adelaide. (14) There is a good chance that their pictures have become thoroughly mixed up. For example, a second colonial art exhibition, which took place in Adelaide in 1848, included 'an exquisite print piece (no. 29)', also called Fruit (untraced), 'by Burnard, [and?] birds, by the same artist ...' (untraced). These works are usually attributed to Robert junior on the assumption that his father was dead by February 1847, but it now seems that they could have been executed by Robert Burnard senior. (15)
  
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  RIN: MH:N39