Williamstown Notables - Reginald Ward Sturgess
From Seeds to Strokes: The Artistic Journey of Reginal Ward Sturgess
R.W. Sturgess (1892 - 1932) was born in 1892 in Newport, the son of cabinet maker Edward Richard Sturgess and his wife Emma (née Ward), who emigrated from Bath, England in 1890. Sturgess was the youngest of four children and the only one born in Australia. The family was interested in the arts, particularly Sturgess's father, but also his elder sister Florence, who went on to become a successful pianist. Edward Sturgess was a good craftsman, having on one occasion decorated a carriage for Queen Victoria, but the economic slump of the 1890s following the land boom in Victoria led to a lack of business, and he abandoned cabinet making and started a seed business in 1893.
The Sturgess family lived at 49 Thompson Street, Williamstown, which no longer exists, and the seed business was located in Pascoe Street, Williamstown.
R.W. Sturgess was educated at Williamstown State School and left school at the age of twelve. His exercise books were filled with sketches of boats of every sort.
In 1905, Sturgess enrolled at the National Gallery Schools with the help of novelist and Williamstown local Ada Cambridge, who had noticed his artistic talents. Special permission had to be obtained for him to be able to enrol at such a young age. There, he was known by the nickname ‘Stogy’ and studied drawing under
Frederick McCubbin in the School of Design, and from 1909, painting under Lindsay Hall, winning prizes for still life and landscape painting in oils. Penleigh Boyd, Louis McCubbin and W.B. McInnes were among his fellow students.
Sturgess left the National Gallery Schools in 1912, and began painting on his own in every spare moment available, often working late at night and striving for perfection. He supported his art by selling painted decorative lampshades, and by working in his father's seed business in Williamstown. He was also briefly a teacher at Williamstown Grammar School.
After his father’s death in 1916, he managed the seed business alone until 1926 when he closed the shop. Only then was he able to concentrate entirely on his painting. He had little need to travel to find subjects to paint with his favourite areas the Malmsbury district, the area around the You Yangs and his home town. His work was romantic, delicate and lyrical.
On 30 July 1917, Sturgess married Meta Townsend, a prizewinning student at the gallery schools from 1909-1914, at the Anglican Church in Malmsbury. The couple would later have one daughter together, Elizabeth, born in 1919.
In 1926 he was injured in a motor accident and his jaw was broken. Although he recovered his heath deteriorated and his fading eyesight forced him to give up his beloved painting in 1930. He died at his Williamstown home on 2 July, 1932 of a brain tumour, thought to be the legacy of the motor accident. He was buried in Williamstown Cemetery.
R.W. Sturgess’s work is reparented in the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery and various regional galleries in Victoria.
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