Richard Read junior arrived in Sydney from his native London in November 1819. By March 1821, he was advertising in the Sydney Gazette as a ‘Miniature, Portrait and Historical Painter’ operating from premises at 59 Pitt Street. He also advertised his services as a teacher, and offered for sale ‘a most elegant collection of drawings consisting of Natives of New Zealand and New South Wales , Views, Flowers, etc.’. Styling himself ‘Read junior’, he urged that others ‘be particular to observe that R.R. jun. has no connexion whatever with any other person in the same profession’, not wishing to be tainted by association with the other Richard Read in Sydney – his father. Read senior (1765–c.1827) had been transported to the colony for forgery in 1813. By 1821, having secured a ticket of leave, Read senior, just like his son, was residing in Pitt Street and working as a ‘Portrait and Historical Painter’ with the ability to take likenesses and miniatures in ‘the finest style of elegance’. Read junior married in Sydney in May 1821, and in July that year was commissioned to create a full-length transparency of Governor Macquarie. According to his ad in the Sydney Monitor, in November 1826, Read junior’s miniature portraits – ‘painted on Ivory in a superior style’ – could be acquired for prices ‘from One Guinea to Five’. Most of Read’s surviving portraits date from this time onwards. Typically, his portraits were executed on a modest scale in watercolour on paper, either half or three-quarter length, and with plain backgrounds. Works by Read in this vein include his portraits of free settler Hannah Laycock (1826); ex-convict ironmonger Lancelot Iredale (1830); the Reverend Samuel Marsden (c. 1833); landowner John Blaxland (1832); and judge Roger Therry (1834). As colonial art authority Richard Neville has observed: ‘The majority of Read’s clients were respectable traders or military officers, the petit bourgeoisie, who appear to have been attracted to Read’s simple, sympathetic manner just as the colonial elite sought out his father’s grand style … But Read had not forgotten his father’s lessons and could still produce miniatures in a smooth Regency style.’ Read operated from 89 Pitt Street between 1826 and 1835 and then from 45 Pitt Street; and appears to have supplemented his income by operating as a stationery supplier. He moved to Surry Hills in the 1840s and a number of his works were included in the 1849 exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts. He later moved to Victoria and settled in East Melbourne, where he died in January 1862. The State Library of New South Wales has the most substantial holdings of Read’s work; other examples are held by the National Library of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, and in private collections.
