Name

George Knight Erskine Fairholme

Culture

Australian | Scottish

Gender

Male

Birth date

25 November 1822

Birth place

Ludgate, Midlothian, Scotland View on map Close map

Death date

16 July 1889

Death Place

Bregenz, Bregenz Bezirk, Vorarlberg, Austria View on map Close map

Movements

Australia from 21 August 1840 onboard 'St George'.

- 1859 (with numerous trips to England, Europe between)

Occupations

Artist | Botanist | Explorer | Printmaker

Summary

Pastoralist, Worked: Australia (QLD)

Context

Australia

Biography

George Knight Erskine Fairholme was born in Scotland in 1822, the third of four brothers of a wealthy and connected family. Fairholme arrived in Sydney in 1839, and the following year travelled to the Darling Downs where he worked for the Leslie and Leith-Hay brothers on their properties before acquiring his own cattle station ‘Bromelton’.

After the death of his older brothers Fairholme became a wealthy man inheriting the property of his uncle in 1853. Returning to Scotland the following year he also travelled in Europe on the advice of his friend the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. Here he met and married Baroness Pauline Poellnitz-Frankenberg. He returned to Australia to sell his properties in 1859, returning to Austria to live at his wife’s castle in Austria.

Fairholme has rudimentary drawing tuition in Scotland and in Australia his friends included artists and scientist including Conrad Martens, Ludwig Leichhardt and ….. During the 1840s he produced a number of pen and ink sketches most relating to work on cattle stations. In England seventeen of these were transferred to lithographic stones by the Anastatic process, and a small number of impressions were taken – probably just for family and friends. Father died 1847 england 1848-49. Registered Bromelton 1853

Last Updated

09 May 2025