Joseph Backler (24 May 1813 – 22 Oct. 1895); English-born Australian painter. Transported to Australia as a convict in 1832, he obtained a ticket of leave in 1842 and was active as a painter from 1842 to 1880. Born in London in 1813. His father was also a painter and Backler was apprenticed to him for some time.... Backler's portraits were all in oil. His style of composition, with a focus on the detail of costume and realistic depiction of his subjects (sometimes unflattering), owed its genesis to the flourishing genre of provincial English portraiture. Backler's portraits are similar in style to the kinds of portraits which similar families in similar social positions in England – the successful working classes or lower middle classes – could have commissioned from local English portrait painters. He was not very involved in the Sydney art scene. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Backler] ...Convicted in 1831 for uttering forged cheques, the 18-year-old, who seemed to The Times 'a highly respectable young man', was sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation for life. Backler arrived in Sydney in the Portland on 25 May 1832. Indents described him as being able to read and write and by profession a landscape painter. ...suspected of being involved in further crimes, he was sent to Port Macquarie. Here Backler was continually in trouble. All told he received 150 lashes, a year in irons and 23 days in cells. At some point, however, he also painted at least 6 landscape oils of the settlement.... Two of these views were of St Thomas's Church of England, Port Macquarie... ...In 1843 Backler advertised his services as a 'Portrait, Miniature and Landscape Painter, in oils and watercolors'. It was as a portrait painter in oils, however, that he made his name. Backler was probably the most prolific of all oil painters in early colonial Australia. More than 120 of his works have survived... [http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/backler-joseph-12778] undefined

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