The colonial painter John Glover was a remarkable, eccentric man. More than six feet tall and weighing over 18 stone, with two club feet, he rose from rural obscurity to become one of England’s most widely admired painters, a significant art scene operator, a wealthy man and the familiar of aristocrats. Energetic, good-humoured, mischievous and something of a ladies’ man, he was an inveterate traveller, a keen musician, a connoisseur of poetry, a tamer of wild birds and a collector of old razors. In his retirement, he travelled half way around the world, established a successful farm and invented Australian landscape art.

by David Hansen