William Fernyhough, on the other hand, compiled A series of twelve profile portraits of the Aborigines of New South Wales, which was published in 1836. Fernyhough’s full length portraits were much less sympathetic drawings than Rodius’s, with the subjects dressed in rags, and faces shown in dehumanizing silhouette. Though never explicitly stated, it is likely that Fernyhough’s silhouettes would have been carefully scrutinized by adherents of the pseudo-science of phrenology, who argued that the shape of a person’s skull determined their cognitive and moral capacities. A leading phrenological theorist, George Coombs, declared for example that “New Hollanders, cannot, with their present brains, adopt European civilization.”74 Yet the lithographs were also reviewed positively. The Sydney Times declared them “entitled to praise as being for the most part striking profile likenesses of our sable townsmen and are well executed. They will form a pretty present to friends in England, as characteristic of this country.”75 The number of copies of these publications which have survived suggests that colonists valued them. Their success also reinforces the diversity of colonial visual representations, and the points at which most colonists engaged with colonial artists.
FIGURE 4.4. Port Jackson. N.S.W. view in Double Bay. For details please see Table 4.1.
The arc of colonial art across the first 60 or so years of colonization is a thus complex narrative, reflecting the heterogenous nature of colonial experience. From the discoveries of the first artists, to the emergence of an urban imagery reflecting the rapid growth of British provincial society, visual culture in NSW was shaped as much by the circumstances of the establishment of the colony as by the capacity of its artists. It is, ultimately, the story of how an ancient land became Australia.
Notes
1 1 Elizabeth Macarthur to Bridget Kingdon, 7 March 1791, in Joy Hughes ed., The journals of Elizabeth Macarthur 1789–1798, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Sydney, 1984, p.24.
2 2 William Charles Wentworth, Australasia. A poem., London, 1823, p. 22.
3 3 Louise Anemaat, Natural Curiosity. Unseen art of the First Fleet, NewSouth Publishing, 2014, pp. 51 & 66.
4 4 David Collins (Brian Fletcher ed.), An account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1, 1798, AH & AW Reed, Sydney, 1975, p. 416.
5 5 Anonymous, “Cunningham’s New South Wales”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, November 1827, p. 603.
6 6 Thomas Palmer to Joyce, 15 December 1794, in Historical Records of NSW, vol.1 pt.2, p. 870.
7 7 Keith Vincent Smith, “Tupaia’s sketchbook”, in Electronic British Library Journal, 2005, article 10: http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2005articles/pdf/article10.pdf accessed 17 October 2017.
8 8 James Cook, Journal of Remarkable Occurrences aboard His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, 6 May 1770.
9 9 James Auchmuty ed.,The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, (London, 1789), Angus & Robertson, 1970, p. 26.
10 10 Arthur Bowes Smyth, The journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon Lady Penryhn 1787–1789, Australian Document Library, Sydney, 1979, p. 70.
11 11 In Bowes Smyth – drawings from his journal `A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China in the Lady Penrhyn . .’, 1787–1789, no. 6, in ML Safe 1/15.
12 12 Bowes Smyth, Journal…, p. 58.
13 13 George MacKaness ed., Thomas Watling. Limner of Dumfries, Australian Historical Monographs 1979 (1945), p. 9.
14 14 Richard Neville, A rage for curiosity, 1997, p. 65.
15 15 Arthur Phillip to Sir Joseph Banks, 13 April 1790, Sir Joseph Banks papers, Mitchell Library, Series 37.11.
16 16 See Bernard Smith, European vision and the South Pacific, 2nd ed., Harper & Row, 1984, pp. 159–163.
17 17 Jane Lennon “Art and science: early Australian natural history drawings and engravings” in Australiana, vol.17, no.3, August 1995, pp.72–77. See also Louise Anemaat, Natural Curiosity: unseen art of the First Fleet, Newsouth Publishing, 2014 for further discussion on the Sydney Bird Painter.
18 18 For an excellent, and full, account of this complex situation see Anemaat, Natural Curiosity, 2014.
19 19 John Latham to AB Lambert, 26 January 1800, ML SAFE/PXD 1098/vol. 1.
20 20 Anemaat, Natural Curiosity, 2014, p.163 & 165. The unknown artist’s Sooty Tern is in the State Library of NSW at PXD 1098 vol. 4 f.5; Watling’s New Holland Tern is in the Natural History Museum, London, at Watling Drawing no. 342.
21 21 For Watling’s plagiarism of John Symth’s A tour in the United States of America (1784), see Louise Anemaat, Natural curiosity, p. 178.
22 22 George Mackaness ed., Letters from an exile at Botany Bay to his Aunt in Dumfries, (1794), 1979.
23 23 Daniel Southwell to his mother 14 April 1790 Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. II, p. 712.
24 24 Balloderree Watling Collection Drawing no. 58, Natural History Museum, London; Collins, An account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1, 1798, (1975, p. 146).
25 25 Watling Drawings 23 and 24, Natural History Museum, London.
26 26 Tench, A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, p. 59.
27 27 Tench, A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, p. 71.
28 28 Tench, A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson, p. 34.
29 29 House of Commons, Report from the select committee on the state of gaols, London, 1819, p. 147.
30 30 John Thomas Smith, Remarks on rural scenery: with twenty etchings of cottages, 1797, p. 14.
31 31 Minutes of Court of Civil Jurisdiction, State Archives & Records of NSW, WCCJ/6, Location 5/110, pp. 236–240.
32 32 This watercolor remained in the possession of the Johnston family until they gave it in the early 1890s, with other documents relating to the are st, to the NSW Government. Not long after this the NSW Government Printer published photo-lithographed copies of it, ensuring that it became one of the definitive images of Bligh. It is now in the Mitchell Library at Safe 4/5.
33 33 Sydney Gazette 28 March 1812.
34 34 The authorship of these plates was unclear for many years as Wallis was described as the artist in legends printed beneath a number of them. However the emergence of a grangerized copy of An historical account of the colony of New South Wales in 2011 confirmed Lycett as the artist. In what appear to be the original watercolors for many of the plates pasted into this volume, Wallis himself has written under them “Drawn by a convict”, strongly inferring that Lycett was their artist as they can be confidently attributed to him on stylistic grounds. See Album of original drawings by Captain James Wallis and Joseph Lycett … Mitchell Library SAFE/PXE 1072.
35 35 Wallis, An Historical Account of the
