Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847)

REUNION OF EROS AND PSYCHE and LOTHAIRE OF BOURGOGNE

At thirty, Thomas Wainewright was a popular and successful gentleman in the literary and artistic circles of London society; a friend of William Blake and Charles Dickens, a published writer and an exhibited artist. At forty he was working on a chain gang in a Tasmanian penal colony, shackled to thieves and murderers.

Pen, Pencil and Poison by Oscar Wilde

"Head of a Convict - very characteristic of low cunning and revenge." Self-portrait painted by Wainewright in Tasmania in the 1840s...