Ally Wilson, illustrator of insects, marries Tilly King, botanic artist, in 1860 South Australian union of nature lovers
(Charles Algernon) Ally Wilson brought a scientific rigour to his illustration of South Australian insects. His accuracy was detected as contributing to the entomological images in George French Angas's 1847 edition of South Australia Illustrated (at left) .
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
(Charles Algernon) Ally Wilson was South Australia’s first “insect man” with a scientific and artistic interest in entomology and natural history that made him one of the early promoters of the South Australian Museum being started.
Wilson emigrated from England to South Australia as a 20-year-old in 1839. On his voyage to South Australia, he spent time sketching and observing wildlife. He identified flying fish off the Cape Verde coast by their lengthened fins and corrected the notion on board that these fish had wings. He wrote in his journal: “Always I found my advantages in the study of natural history and shall do so more and more when we arrive in Australia where every living thing almost is unknown and therefore curious at least in the infant colony to which we are going”.
Soon after arriving, Wilson made sketches of Adelaide, including one of the family’s prefabricated wooden home in North Adelaide. In 1846 he sketched his parents’ second and more elaborate residence in East Terrace, Adelaide city. That year, Wilson was appointed to the South Australian supreme court staff, becoming registrar of probates and commissioner of inland revenue in 1858.
Wilson’s main hobby was entomology and he made many watercolour sketches of insects in his collection. He wrote a series of natural history articles, mainly on insects, for the South Australian Register newspaper under the pen name Naturae Amator. He also wrote extensively and contributed regularly to several early magazines on scientific subjects. His informed and stimulating articles showed, even in the colony’s early years, an interest in pure and applied science.
Wilson was able to describe, record and name the insects he saw at the start of European settlement. Many early settlers came to him for advice on how to protect their vegetables, fruit trees and vines from the ravages of the many insects attacking their crops. In the early days, he sent many of his newly discovered insects back to England.
When colonial artist George French Angas published his 1847 edition of South Australia Illustrated, the editor the Register, referred to Wilson’s input to its entomological sketches for Angas's book: "Mr Algernon Wilson, long known among us as 'Naturae Amator', has furnished the greater part of the subjects for these sketches; and of the sketches themselves too much, we think, cannot be said in praise of their extreme accuracy."
Wilson also helped found the Philosophical Society of South Australia in 1853. In 1860, he was elected a fellow of the British Linnaean Society. That year, he married Matilda (Tilly) King of Kingsford in St George’s Church of England, Gawler. King, who also arrived in South Australia, with her parents in 1839, also became both a botanical painter and collector, who worked with the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Her brother Stephen King Jr was the illustrator on the John McDouall Stuart expedition of 1861-63.
Tilly Wilson/King was described in her obituary as “one of the first ladies to paint South Australian native flowers”. Her formal, Regency-style watercolour, Australian Native Flowers (1858), was shown in the centennial exhibition of historical records at Adelaide in 1936. She was on the committee set up to choose statuary for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens (bought about 1867) and, with director Dr Richard Schomburgk, compiled and catalogued 600 specimens of dried and pressed South Australian wildflowers and ferns. They were bound in book form by the South Australian government and sent to the 1881 Paris universal exhibition.
Ally and Tilly Wilson’s second daughter, Emily Annie Layard Wilson, also was an accomplished watercolour painter of Australian flowers. The Wilson family produced many painters and illustrators including descendant Shirley Cameron Wilson whose extensive archival records and her book on Australian women painters were held by the State Library of South Australia.
