William Buelow Gould

Gould was born as William Holland in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. While little is known of his early life, it is thought that he received artistic training under Irish painter William Mulready, R.A., in London, and German lithographer Rudolph Ackermann in The Strand, and that he worked in Spode's factory in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, as a painter of porcelain. Gould evidently moved around England quite a bit, and on 7 November 1826 he was convicted in Northampton, East Midlands, of having by "force of arms stolen one coat", and was subsequently sentenced to "seven years beyond the seas", a phrase indicating transportation to the then British penal colony of Australia. While the sentence was for the fairly standard term of seven years, as with most convicts, Gould would never return to England. At the time of this conviction, Gould was married and had two children, and had also received a prior conviction for "stealing colours". ==Life in Van Diemen's Land==

Gould was transported to Australia aboard the convict ship Asia, arriving in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), in December 1827. His work also included landscape sketches providing important insights into the convict settlement. The Macquarie Harbour settlement was closed in 1833, and along with the other remaining prisoners, Gould was transferred to the Port Arthur Penal Station on the south-east coast of Tasmania. Gould was granted his Certificate of freedom from Port Arthur on 25 June 1835, and worked briefly for a coachbuilder in Launceston in the north of Tasmania, before returning to Hobart and marrying Ann Reynolds in 1836. While he continued his mainly still life artwork, the quality of the work became variable, and he descended into a cycle of drunkenness, poverty, and prison sentences for theft. Gould died of natural causes at his home on Macquarie Street, Hobart on 11 December 1853. ==Notable works==

, from the Port Davey area, Tasmania, c.1833, W. B. GouldGould's work is preserved in many galleries around Australia, as well as being held by private collectors. The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston holds 177 of his botanical works. Some notable and representative works include his Still life, fruit (1832), Sketchbook of fishes (c1832) (see below), Still life, game, River scene with aborigines (1838), and Still life, flowers in a blue jug (c1840). Sketchbook of fishes ) from the Sketchbook of fishes, c1832, showing the full sketchbook page and bindings from the Sketchbook of fishes, c1832 It was around 1832, at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, that Gould produced his noted Sketchbook of fishes, also known as ''Gould's sketchbook of fishes, Gould's book of fish, or Sketchbook of Fishes in Macquarie Harbour''. This sketchbook consisted of thirty-six separate watercolour-on-paper sketches measuring x each. While only six of these works are signed by the author, and none are dated, all works are attributed to Gould. The sketchbook includes a numbered list of the fish, with common names written in pencil by G. T. Stilwell, and species names in pencil by A. M. Olsen, who is thought to have formally identified the fish. This work was made famous in recent times by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan's critically acclaimed and Commonwealth Writers' Prize winning 2001 novel ''Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish''. This book is a fictionalised account of Gould's life in Van Diemen's Land, focussing on his time at Macquarie Harbour and his work on the Sketchbook of fishes. The book includes a reproduction of Gould's Common seadragon painting on the cover (although the actual image used varies depending on the edition), and other works from the sketchbook as the twelve chapter frontispieces. as does the Tasmanian Historical Studies issue dedicated to Tasmanian Creativity and Innovation. UNESCO Memory of the World listing Gould's Sketchbook of fishes was inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register at a ceremony in Hobart on 1 April 2011. This is the equivalent of a World Heritage listing for historic documentary material, recognising the sketchbook as a document of world significance. It was noted that the sketchbook contained the first record of a number of species. A spokesman for the CSIRO stated that current scientists still used information from the sketchbook, adding that little was known today about some of the species that Gould had drawn. ==See also==