This small group of paintings dating from the 1940s are by Stan Simpson of Uralba on the Far North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. The watercolours depict the rural landscapes around Uralba, as well as nearby subjects at Lismore, Tuncester, Byron Bay, and further north at Caboonbah in Queensland.
It is likely that Stan Simpson is a member of the Simpson family of Uralba, descended from Pearson Simpson, who arrived in Sydney from Manchester, England in 1826. Pearson Hudson Simpson (Pearson's grandson), born in 1854, settled at Uralba. He built one of the most beautiful homes in the area and became one of the earliest and most successful fruit growers in the community. With the help of other so-called 'pioneers' in the area, he organised to build a school at Uralba. He was also the first warden of the Church of England church erected at Uralba in 1911.
It is unclear what relation our artist is to Pearson Hudson Simpson but it is possible he is his great-grandson. There is a Stanley John James Simpson (1918–1991) born to Joseph John Simpson, a farmer at Uralba. Elsewhere Joseph John Simpson is described as being the grandson of Pearson Hudson Simpson, who inherited farmland at Duck Creek, Uralba.
These paintings are a fascinating document of 1940s Australia and the rural expansiveness of the land. They record banana crops, horse-saddling, examples of housing and rural industry, as well the no-longer-extant Caboonbah Homestead of Henry Plantagenet Somerset. These paintings are, on the one hand, fresh and colourful evocations of the beauty of the natural landscape; but they also take their place in the complex history of colonial settlement in the Alstonville Plateau.
