Charles Rodius (or Rhodius) was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1802. As a teenager he moved to Paris, France, where he studied art and worked as a teacher of "music, painting, drawing and languages in families of the first distinction". In February 1829, while living in London, England, he was charged with stealing a perfume bottle, tickets, an opera glass and a handkerchief from a woman's purse. Rodius defended himself, arguing that the items were gifts from some of his female students. He was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation to the Australian penal colony of New South Wales. At the time of his trial, he was described as "a young foreigner, dressed in a most fashionable style". Rodius arrived in New South Wales aboard the convict ship Sarah in December 1829.
He was assigned soon afterwards to the Department of Public Works and was employed as a tutor to several colonial officials and their families. By 1830, Rodius was producing lithographs. Having established himself as an artist with the reputation of a dandy, Rodius, with the support of his patronage, was granted a ticket of exemption in 1832 and established a successful practice that encompassed printmaking, landscape painting and portraiture in pastel, charcoal, pencil and watercolour.
Rodius’s portraits, created throughout the 1830s and 1840s, captured a cross section of the Sydney community, depicting government officials, Indigenous leaders, business people, ex-convicts, clergymen and criminals.
In the late 1850s, Rodius suffered a ‘severe attack of paralysis’ which left him unable to work. He died a pauper in April 1860, at Liverpool Hospital. He was fifty-eight years old.
Source: Sydney 1830 - Government House Stables from the Domain; Charles Rodius (1802-1860); Courtesy: State Library of New South Wales
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