John Tindale was born in Warwickshire in 1809 and came to Sydney in 1820 to join his father, a convict who had been transported to NSW in 1812 and who received a free pardon in 1816. After schooling at King's School Parramatta he developed farming enterprises in Bathurst, NSW. John Tindale senior was well connected in colonial society, but he was unable to cast off his convict origins. John Tindale married Mary Wybrow in 1830 and they had several children. When the portraits were commissioned in 1841, the Tindales were a successful and wealthy - characteristic of the second generation of the children of convict parents. The marriage broke up in the late 1840s. In the 1860s John Tindale's health collapsed. Around 1870, by then a considerable landowner in New South Wales, he moved to New Town, Tasmania, apparently for the sake of his health.
