Caroline Simpson Collection

Portrait of the Reverend Samuel Leigh,around 1820 / John Jackson (attrib.)

Jackson, John, 1778-1831.

[c1820]

1 painting : oil on cloth; 43 x 34 cm.

Not signed; stamped on strainer bar lower right "MW064"; other chalk and felt-pen inscriptions on strainer bars; label on frame beneath image "Samuel Leigh".

missionaries
portraits
ministers of religion
Leigh, Samuel, Rev., 1785-1852.

Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society

Samuel Leigh, Methodist missionary, was a pioneering figure for Wesleyanism in Australia and New Zealand. He arrived in Sydney in August 1815, the first Wesleyan missionary to reach Australia, and in 1817 he opened the first Wesleyan chapel in Australia at Castlereagh, west of Sydney. This was followed by chapels in Sydney, Parramatta, Liverpool and Windsor. He later opened a mission station in Tasmania and established a mission at Whangaroa, New Zealand. He returned permanently to England in 1832. [ref: entries for Samuel Leigh in 'Australian Dictionary of Biography' and 'An Encyclopedia of New Zealand' edited by A.H. McLintock, 1966]
The portrait was been dated to c1820 based on another Jackson portrait, a picture of the Nga Puhi chiefs Hongi and Waikato who travelled to England with Samuel Leigh and his fellow missionary Thomas Kendall in March 1820. While in London the two chiefs were painted by John Jackson RA, a prolific portraitist. The portrait of the chiefs, like that of Samuel Leigh, was in formerly in the collection of the Methodist Missionary Society.

The Methodist Church, Overseas Division (Methodist Missionary Society); Christie's (London) Topographical Pictures 16 July 1993, lot 241; Caroline Simpson Collection, Clyde Bank, The Rocks, Sydney, 2001-2004.

An engraving of this portrait was published as the frontispiece of Rev Alexander Strahan's 'Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Samuel Leigh' , London. Hamilton Adams, 1853, engraved by G. Stodart after an original oil by J.Jackson. Reproduced in Grace Karskens' People of the River: lost worlds of early Australia, published 2020 by Allen & Unwin.

Museum of Sydney ; MOS2007/92

You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Museums of History NSW to request permission.

Picture

42466