Joseph Backler

Joseph Backler (24 May 1813 – 22 October 1895) was an English-born Australian painter. Transported to Australia as a convict in 1832, he obtained a ticket of leave in 1842 and was active as a painter from 1842 to 1880.

Early life and transportation Joseph Backler, son of Joseph and Jane Backler, was born in London in 1813. His father was also a painter and Backler was apprenticed to him for some time. This sentence was commuted to transportation for life. and was assigned to the Department of Surveyor General Sir Thomas Mitchell. Following the death of his first wife Margaret in 1852, he married Sarah Tincer (possibly within a year of Margaret's death).

By 1882 Backler had returned to Sydney, where he worked as a portrait painter and based his work on photography. He died in October 1895 and was buried at Waverley Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife Sarah.

As a painter Backler's portraits were all in oil. His style of composition, with a focus on the detail of costume and realistic depiction of his subjects (sometimes unflattering), owed its genesis to the flourishing genre of provincial English portraiture. Backler's portraits are similar in style to the kinds of portraits which similar families in similar social positions in England – the successful working classes or lower middle classes – could have commissioned from local English portrait painters. He was not very involved in the Sydney art scene.

Landscapes

Portraits