Thomas Clark, teacher and painter, arrived in Victoria from England in about 1852, having been anatomical draftsman at King's College London and headmaster of the Birmingham School of Design. By the 1860s he was teaching at the Artisans' Schools of Design in Carlton and Collingwood, and becoming known for his landscapes of the Melbourne area. Several of his works, including Fern Tree Gully, Dandenong and Ulysses and Diomedes Capturing the Horses of Rhesus, King of Thrace were exhibited in the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. A suggestion from Clark in 1861 resulted in the establishment of the NGV School in 1870; he was its first drawing master, and taught Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin before he had to resign in ill health in 1876. The NGV has his landscapes Coast Scene, St Kilda (1857) and Falls on the Wannon (1870).
