At Billiards (sic) house, about Xmas, 1879, Parramatta Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples (1853 - 1943), painting: oil on wood panel, 24 x 32 cm

The artist Robert Ponsonby Staples, was born at Lissan House, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland in 1853, third son of Sir Nathanial Staples, 11th Baronet. He received most of his education in Europe, chiefly in Belgium including art training at the Academy of Fine Arts, Louvain, followed by training in Dresden, Paris and London. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy London in 1875.

Staples visited Australia in 1879-1880 and was evidently a guest of the Billyard family at Elizabeth Farm while they were lessees of the property from the Macarthur family from 1875 to 1881. William Whaley Billyard (1815-1903), sometime Crown Solicitor of NSW, and his wife Elizabeth (1824-1905) had a large family, including several daughters. The woman in the cane chair in this picture may be Elizabeth Billyard and the young woman in the hammock could be either of her younger daughters, Beatrice born in 1857 or Blanche born in 1863. The hammock is slung on the southern end of the eastern verandah of Elizabeth Farm house.