Literary historian Adrian Mitchell has written what he describes as a fictional biography, a novel, based on the life of the colonial artist S.T. Gill.

He writes "I have taken up the paintings and sketches of Samuel Thomas Gill as my chief source; and for the most part these are all real events, though with a bit of a helpful gloss here and there. That is, this book is a kind of biography, an attempt to bring Gill to life, but indefensibly, without the usual kinds of evidence biographers draw on. In Gill's case, the pictures are pretty much all we have to go on."

In fact, we do know quite a bit about the "real' S.T. Gill, from his birth in Somerset in England in 1818, his migration with his family at the age of 21 to South Australia, and then his travels in Australia over the next 40 years until his death in Melbourne in 1880.  We have some of the family papers, an actual Gill diary, his annotated juvenile sketchbook, some letters, extensive newspaper archives which discuss Gill at most stages in his career, reminiscences by contemporaries as well as the evidence provided by his oeuvre, which runs into several thousand images.

Mitchell, to give himself the licence to tell a great yarn, has given his literary character a new name and identity, Ethan Dibble, and as he himself confesses, "And why let details get in the way of a good story?" It takes a great stretch of the imagination to link Mr Dibble, by Mitchell's pen, with the historical Mr Gill, other than they shared a few episodes in common.  Mr Dibble is a very long-winded, slightly pedantic and somewhat humourless gentleman, who sets out to demonstrates his erudition in English and colonial politics, with references to everything from the French Revolution to quotations from Dr Johnson, references to Samuel Richardson's novels, to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which was published almost 10  years after Gill left England.  Dibble has a slightly antiquarian bent of phrase, despite the interspersed quotations from vernacular speech.

Dibble has a passion for colonial gossip, an intimate knowledge of South Australian topography, particularly evident in his discussion of the Burra Burra copper mines, and he loves to engage in lengthy digressions on such historical figures as Sir Frederick Pottinger.  Dibble is also given to a somewhat bitchy predisposition in his vehement attacks on the fellow painter George French Angas, referred to as Flute.  Dibble writes "Mr Flute's folio of sketches has come out, published in London. There he is, simpering away in a frontispiece portrait, looking like a lovesick spaniel, leaning against a carefully dusted off rock and displaying for us his paintbox, beautifully cleaned for the occasion, and likewise showing us that he is at the end pages of his sketchbook, presumably filled, with a pencil that looks never to have been disturbed apart from having been sharpened for the pose. To me it is a still life arranged to suitable effect. He looks to have not a worry in the world, nor a shred of moral conscience – as has been revealed in his book. For when I looked through his published sketches, oh the supercilious cheat! Contemptible fraud!  Cad, scoundrel, grub! Oh the dirty dog! Deepest dyed villain. Yet his visage is as smooth and bland as a coddled egg, and smug with it. What has he done? He has included in his volume three of my sketches, he has passed them off as his own. Wretched disgrace of a man. And he is one of our betters? One of the Nobs? He is no gentleman."  It is this experience which turned Dibble to drink.

In contrast, the historical Gill was friends with the Angas family and received early commissions from them and there is no evidence of any bad blood between him and the artist Angas in the family.  However, it may be unjust to complain about lack of historical accuracy, for example, Gill migrated to South Australia with his parents, brother and sister, and not to escape them, as was the case of Dibble, as we are dealing with a fictional character.

Adrian Mitchell is a scholar with a detailed knowledge of South Australian colonial life and has a desire to share it with a broad audience without the need of exacting historical methodology.  With Mr Dibble as his mouthpiece, he takes us through a fascinating journey through colonial Australia, along the way describing some of the iconic works by Gill, lending to the descriptions a personal insider view.  It is an enjoyable and thoroughly readable book.

Sasha Grishin is an emeritus professor at the ANU.