David Tulloch (c. 1829 - 1869)

Artist and engraver who upon arriving in Melbourne on the Martin Luther from Greenock, Scotland on January 3, 1849, E. Tulloch, an illustrator and engraver, was employed by Thomas Ham to contribute to Ham’s Illustrated Australian Magazine. Tulloch’s best illustration was a view of Orr’s Station Avoca and a view of Young Hill in North Pyrenees, Victoria.

In 1851, following the discovery of gold, Tulloch went to the Victorian goldfields where he was commissioned by Ham to make sketches of the diggers and diggings. Ham published Tulloch’s five sketches in August 1852 as Ham’s Five Views of the Goldfields of Mount Alexander and Ballarat in the Colony of Victoria, Drawn on the Spot by D. Tulloch. The sketches are among the earliest known views of the Victorian diggings, and the decorative paper cover also carried a series of lithographed vignettes by Tulloch. Another of his goldfields’ sketches, Forest Creek, Mount Alexander, appeared as an engraving in The Gold Diggers’ Portfolio, published by Ham in 1854.

An unsigned, untitled, and undated oil painting, typically referred to as Mining Camp near Bathurst (DL), is believed to be Tulloch’s work. Sir William Dixson acquired the painting and attributed it to E. Tulloch, an otherwise unknown artist. Tulloch set up his own business in November 1852 as an engraver, draughtsman, copperplate printer, and lithographer, and in March 1853 he formed a partnership with map engraver James Davie Brown. The several maps and specimens of commercial engraving that they exhibited at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition were awarded a bronze medal, and that year Tulloch and Brown also received a silver medal at the Victorian Industrial Exhibition. The partnership was dissolved in late 1856, after which Tulloch worked for a variety of firms.

Tulloch was declared bankrupt on January 24, 1862, but no creditors or insolvencies turned up at the meeting held on February 25. From 1864 to 1866, he was listed in Melbourne directories as an engraver of 91 Cecil Street, Emerald Hill (South Melbourne). Tulloch died in Melbourne Hospital of phthisis on September 17, 1869. In 1889, Herbert Woodhouse called Tulloch “an excellent engraver on steel and copperplate of both artistic and mechanical subjects, besides being a good draftsman.”