Until now there has been no family history of Walter Withers (1854-1914), a notable but underestimated Australian landscape artist of the Heidelberg school. For nearly 200 years his Birmingham ancestors had worked as tailors, sometimes also butchers. During the Georgian period and then into Victorian England, Birmingham changed and the Withers family with it. Tobacco and twine took over from butchery and tailoring which made it possible for Walter’s father, Edwin Withers to become a wealthy businessman and gentleman.

How Edwin Withers acquired his wealth, why he changed his family’s business, and what caused his dislike of his son’s choice of career are questions asked in this book. How Walter acquired his aptitude for painting, why he chose to become an artist and what made him decide upon Australia for his career are answered in this volume.

The importance of Walter Withers lies in the fact that he was the first to paint Australia in Australia’s own colours. He explored Victoria from the Bellarine to Creswick and from Ballarat to Cowes.

His influence upon the next generation is found in the work of the Lindsay brothers; and it was he who welcomed the first women, Jane Seymour whom he taught and then Clara Southern, into the Buonarotti club and the Victorian Artists Society.

The value of my approach and methodology opens the way to further research which might similarly explore the motivations of other artists within the social contexts of their lives and origins.

No Place Quite Like It (October 2023) includes a Foreword by Andrew Mackenzie OAM (art historian) and Eileen Mackley AM (President, Victorian Artists Society). Extensive images, maps, charts and family trees, provide a visual porthole through which an insight is made into the lives and times of Walter Withers and his wife Fanny Flinn.