About this work
W. B. Gould was transported to what European settlers called Van Diemen’s Land in 1827, having been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for stealing clothes. Before his transportation, Gould worked as a draftsman for Rudolf Ackermann, the London publisher and print seller, and also as a ceramics painter in Staffordshire. Gould served his sentence in Hobart, Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur and, between bouts of further run-ins with the law, Gould returned to his art. He was the only early European artist in Van Diemen’s Land to specialise in still-life painting in oils.