Thunder Peter Lalor as Speaker 1893 {1893} SLV [PA]

Thunder, Annie (active c.1880-93; Australian?)
Hon.Peter Lalor as Speaker 1893
Oil on canvas, 189 x 123 cm
Presented by the Government of Victoria, 1895; transferred to SLV from NGV, 1951
State Library of Victoria (acc.no.H141871)

Lalor (1827-89) famously led the Eureka Stockade in December 1854. Acquitted in March 1855, he was then appointed to the Victorian Legislative Council in December 1855 as a goldfields representative. In the new Victorian Parliament of 1856, he moved to the Legislative Assembly and remained a member for many years, eventually becoming Speaker (1880-87).

The SLV advises that a very similar portrait in the Ballarat Art Gallery, presumably the original, is by Tennyson Cole (for whom, see Cole (T.) Duncan Gillies 1891 {1891} SLV [PA]).

Mrs Annie Thunder (née Fitzgerald) is described by the SLV as a well-respected copyist (with the biographical dates noted above). The entry in Joan Kerr’s 1992 Dictionary suggests that Mrs Thunder studied in Paris, and was active in Victoria from 1866-91, working in pastels in particular.

Refs.

Not listed in NGV 1894 or 1905

For this work, see SLV online catalogue entry and Kerr Dictionary (1992), p.798