Edwin Dalton was an English painter, photographer and lithographer who spent some time in North America before setting up as a portrait painter in Melbourne in 1853. Specialising in works in French crayon (pastel), he moved to Sydney to make a series of life-sized portraits of prominent families and local identities that were deemed so 'life-like' as to be 'almost laughable'. In December 1858 he advertised his 'invention', the crayotype or crayongraph (now called a biotype), a photograph coloured over with pastel. By June 1863 demand for his portraits far exceeded his capacity to supply them; by 1865 he had sold his business, which continued to operate under his name, and returned to England.
Updated 2022
