James Edward (1826-1893)
James Edward Meadows was a successful artist in his own time, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy of Art in Dublin, the Royal Society of British Artists, the British Institute, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Manchester City Art Gallery. Like his brother William James, or George, he painted in Venice as well as in the English Home Counties: Essex, Kent, Sussex and Surrey.
These views by James Edward Meadows of the great goldfields cities, Ballarat and Bendigo, were commissioned by the Victorian colonial authorities for display in the Victorian Court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in South Kensington in 1886.
Meadows never visited Australia – to create the views, he would have used photographs of the main buildings as well as maps and plans of the cities. He would have used standard architectural principles to create an isometric image based on a notional vantage point above the south side of each city. His lack of local knowledge becomes clear when one perceives his failure to depict the steep escarpment to the east of Lydiard Street in Ballarat.