Charles W. Andrews | A Filipina standing at a fountain beneath a banana tree, watercolour, framed and glazed

Charles W. Andrews

A Filipina standing at a fountain beneath a banana tree

large watercolour on card heightened with gum arabic (490 x 390mm.), signed and dated lower right "C.W. Andrews / 1863", mounted, framed and glazed

Charles W. Andrews was born in 1830, and is probably to be identified with the artist 'Mr Andrews' who arrived in Sydney in 1853, on the steamship Cleopatra. He applied for the post of drawing master at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts where he may have been employed until April 1854. He advertised himself as a 'Portrait and Miniature Painter' in the Illustrated Sydney News, but his work is only known from illustrations which began to appear in the local press and other popular printed ephemera.

There are records of other commissions in Sydney until January 1857, when he moved to Hong Kong, visiting Manila in the same year. He worked for the press in Hong Kong and the Philippines from 1857 into the 1860s, and was the main artist for the short-lived Ilustracion Filipina in Manila in 1859-60.