A Blighted Paradise
Lisa Loader
Exhibition Curator
(Endnote reference numbers are linked)

The story of northern Australian art during the period 1770 to 1914 is closely associated with the discovery, early exploration and settlement of the continent. It is a complex narrative of contrasting visions, documenting the exploits and challenges of those who ventured to the region. These visual interpretations, from unfinished sketches through to works of great clarity, produced by naval officers, settlers, and both amateur and professional artists, are invaluable historical records today.

Northern Australia is revealed in this art as a paradise of new plant and animal species, ethnographic curiosities and Arcadian landscapes, and, conversely, a melancholy and threatening place, rife with unpleasant experiences. The difficulties encountered with the coral reefs, shoals, treacherous tides, shortages of water, predatory wildlife, difficult terrain and extremes of climate, and, not unique to the north, poor health, hostile encounters with Aborigines, and challenges associated with establishing settlements, are documented extensively. The variety of artistic response can be attributed to the diversity of this geographical region, the artists’ range of experiences, and their own interpretation of these within the changing philosophical, artistic and political frameworks of the time.

These representations of northern Australia are concentrated in three main historical phases — the initial voyages of discovery, the charting of the coastline and exploration of the interior, and settlement.

The voyages of discovery during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries commenced with James Cook on the Endeavour (1768–71) and culminated with Nicolas Baudin on Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste (1800–04) and the parallel voyage of Matthew Flinders on the Investigator (1801–03). These voyages were ostensibly scientific, with some nationalistic objectives, and were the first to include professional artists as part of the scientific team.

The later series of voyages, undertaken to chart the northern coast more accurately, commenced in 1817 with Phillip Parker King on the Mermaid. There were many voyages of this type undertaken in the first half of the nineteenth century, but they only occasionally included professional artists, such as on the Beagle under the command firstly of J. C. Wickham and then of John Lort Stokes, and the Rattlesnake under the command of Owen Stanley. By now, the main purpose of the voyages had changed, from having an emphasis on the newly established scientific disciplines and the discovery of new lands, to a wider interest in detailed and technical hydrography of sea routes.¹  Greater reliance was placed on the naval officers for this visual recording of the exploration, with assistance from other members of the scientific team. This phase also encompasses material produced during exploration of the interior, including the comprehensively documented expedition led by Augustus Charles Gregory into the Northern Territory in 1855–56.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the settlement of northern Australia resulted in a range of visual records, produced mostly by individuals, some of whom were amateur artists, who journeyed north to take up pastoral leases, establish businesses in the developing townships, or in search of mineral wealth. A number of professional artists also travelled north during the late nineteenth century, in search of adventure and the exotic. It was during this later period that artworks began to document more extensively the country that lay beyond the coast. They provide greater interpretation of the environment, with the influence of various artistic trends becoming evident.

The nineteenth-century visions of northern Australia have a similarity to those associated with the discovery of Tahiti, which ‘was seen from the beginning, by poets and artists, as a tainted paradise — its pleasures fitful, physical , and transient’.²  The ‘belief in an ideal southern kingdom’³ was to some extent sullied by the various aspects of the reality experienced. For Tahiti it was in response to the heathen practices of the Tahitians, whereas for northern Australia it was largely in response to certain aspects of the natural environment.

This reality is exposed in varying degrees by the artworks of this period. Artists such as Thomas Baines, who focused on significant events during exploration, provide an insight into the difficulties encountered during interior exploration. Watering party of the North Australian Expedition under a clump of pandanus at Quail Island, Paterson’s Bay 1868, showing a desperate search for water after the Monarch was damaged on a reef, documents common problems faced by most expeditions — in particular, locating fresh water and avoiding the notorious coral reefs. Damage to vessels, usually from the reefs, is a theme depicted in many works from this period. Examples include Phillip Parker King’s The “Mermaid” under repair at Careening Bay on the Kimberley coast 1820 and William Westall’s Wreck of the Porpoise, Flinders Expedition 1803.

The depiction, and in particular the scale, of the horses and explorers in Thomas Baines’s Stampede of the pack-horses on starting for the interior of Australia from the main camp on the Victoria River 1868 and The Baines River and its side channel just above Curiosity Peak, Victoria River, North Australia 1868, indicates a sense of an overwhelming environment. Other works by Baines contain this sense of scale, serving to highlight the human drama of exploration.

Problems created by extremes of climate are well documented. Naval officer Owen Stanley, in particular, produced many works that surveyed the damage caused by a hurricane in 1839 that destroyed the settlement of Port Essington one year after it was founded. Stanley’s well-observed watercolour and ink sketch H. M. S Pelorus at low water 1839 is from this series.

The work of natural history artists Sydney Parkinson, Ferdinand Bauer, Charles Lesueur and James Emery accurately documents the extensive varieties of botanical and zoological specimens encountered, and reveals the great beauty they perceived. Some indication of the exceptional nature and rich diversity present in the region is demonstrated in the large number of specimens collected. To record this great variety, Bauer found it necessary to increase the colour code system from the 1–140 colours used in early European work to a code of 1–900+ colours in Australia. ⁴  In a similar vein, the ‘flower painter’ Ellis Rowan extensively documented plant species in north Queensland, returning to the area five times, declaring that the tropical flowers were ‘more beautiful than all’.⁵

Landscape artist William Westall, who produced nine oil paintings on his return to London, highlights the positive aspects in his Arcadian representations of the region. In View of Port Bowen, Queensland, August 1802 c.1812, the Aborigine depicted as the ‘noble savage’ engaged in hunting, with a kangaroo slung over his shoulder, adds to the impression of a land of plenty.

Other artists to present the northern landscape in a positive light were Isaac Walter Jenner and Edward Bevan, who in their atmospheric paintings depict Townsville as a beautiful and tranquil port settlement in Townsville c.1900 and Castle Hill 1886 respectively. Phillip Parker King’s watercolour Raffles Bay n.d. is a more direct response to the landscape, yet depicts the northern region as attractive. Several years later in 1827, the settlement of Fort Wellington was established at Raffles Bay, only to survive two miserable years as it coped with widespread scurvy and other problems. King’s work to some extent highlights the responsibilities of the artist in representing unknown regions — in some cases a cruel reality existed behind the idyllic veneer.

The tension between the apparent paradise and the firsthand experience is alluded to in Richard Beechey’s painting of 1863, Lt J. Stokes speared in the lungs while discovering the Victoria River, Australia 1839. It comes as a surprise when viewing this work, with its lush, tropical forests, bright sunny skies, calm seas and white beaches, to recognise the dramatic incident that is taking place. Similarly, Graham Gore’s hauntingly beautiful work Burial Reach, Flinders River, Queensland c.1841 recognises the presence of death, and hints at the vulnerability of the crew aboard the small gig as it makes its way up the expansive and beautiful Flinders River in far north Queensland.

Later works highlight both the struggles and various successes in the quest to establish settlements and develop relations with the Aborigines in these areas. Works such as Chinamen’s garden, Frankfield 1884 and Dam at the waterhole 1884 by Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe, The verandah “Winterbourne” 1873 by Annie Pring Marten and An interesting figure in a flowing white dress sailing along the hot sands 1868 by Lucy Gray, provide some indication of these aspects of life in northern Australia.

Early Visions

Dutch activity in northern Australian waters is recorded as early as 1606, with William Janz in the Duyfken sighting the eastern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.¹  Although the Dutch completed some charting of the north, west and south coasts of Australia, their presence did not extend to any exploration of the continent, beyond that of a superficial nature,² and did not result in any substantial documentation through art. During this ‘golden age’ of Dutch exploration a poor opinion of the continent was formed, changing little during the 150 years they continued to visit the region.

In all that time the pictorial records of the continent left behind by this country of artists would be shamed, both in quality and quantity, by the single week-end output of an average amateur artist of today.³

It was the British and the French who were to respond most enthusiastically to the opportunities presented by the exploration of the continent and, in particular, by the inclusion of scientific teams during the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century voyages.

The initial voyage of James Cook into southern waters on the Endeavour (1768–71) was the first of the great European scientific sea journeys, and as such the first to include professional artists. It set the precedent for a trend, adopted by French, Russian and Spanish voyages, that was to provide a significant proportion of the scientific art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and, in the case of the British and the French, an invaluable source of visual records documenting early Australia.

The inclusion of scientific teams on these voyages was inspired by the Age of Enlightenment, which had emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century, and was encouraged, in England, by influential patrons such as Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society from 1778 to 1820.

The Enlightenment was the main philosophical thrust of the eighteenth century and produced men of wide-ranging culture whose interests did not acknowledge the bounds of art, science and philosophy; their curiosity was literally encyclopaedic.⁴

The visual records produced by these professional artists, who were often trained in art schools and academies, were influenced by other members of the scientific team and the naval officers who had been trained in empirical, or direct, habits of observation. There was a shift away from the neo-classical approach (based on art of the past) to one of direct observation of the subject and to the creation of artworks that reflected the various scientific disciplines in detail.⁵

A major contribution of the professional artists on these voyages was to the field of natural history. In particular, artists Ferdinand Bauer, Sydney Parkinson and Charles Leseuer worked closely with the naturalists to produce drawings to support and complement their work. Although accuracy was the key criteria of these works, artists were also able to consider an overall aesthetic and produce works of great beauty.⁶

Depictions of the landscape formed another important aspect of the professional artists’ output: to ‘record information for the much wider public of scientists and those curious about the new world’,⁷ and in response to the growing European interest in landscape art.

In the late eighteenth century … in an irreversible historical process, towns — indeed, cities — became so integral to European and Euro-colonial development that the work of landscape painting moved into new territory … urban citizens turned to landscape — visual, verbal and imagined — to compensate for this loss of sensory connection.⁸

Coastal profiles produced by the professional artists can also be considered a form of landscape art, ‘although they retain their identity as profiles, intended to assist navigation’⁹ and to some extent to demonstrate ‘discovery’ of a geographical area.

James Cook’s first voyage was originally planned to observe the Transit of Venus in Tahiti, but was then enlarged to become a fully equipped scientific journey, with the support of wealthy patron Joseph Banks. After completing the original objective, Cook sailed further south to the eastern coast of Australia, in what may have been very much an afterthought.

He had searched, briefly and unsuccessfully, for the mythical Great South Land, and he had refound, circumnavigated, and charted Tasman’s far from mythical New Zealand. Now it was time to return home, and his decision to examine the east coast of New Holland was more or less an afterthought.¹⁰

At various locations along the eastern coast Cook’s scientific team collected and recorded the exotic new flora and fauna they found. Approximately thirty thousand specimens¹¹ were collected and many hundreds of drawings completed. An extended stay at Endeavour River on the north Queensland coast, after the Endeavour was damaged on the Great Barrier Reef, provided additional opportunities for the collection and documentation of various specimens in this area.

he two official artists on this voyage were landscape artist Alexander Buchan (d.1769) and natural history artist Sydney Parkinson (1745–71), although assistant naturalist Herman Diedrich Spöring (?1733–71) is often listed as an artist, in recognition of the artworks produced by him during the voyage.

Sydney Parkinson emerged as the most significant of these artists, producing over six hundred sketches.¹²  Alexander Buchan died early in the voyage, and Spöring had limited time to devote to drawing, owing to the demands associated with being the assistant naturalist.

Banks’s original intention had been that the drawings executed on the voyage should fall into two groups: faithful copies of singular plants and animals, from Parkinson; drawings of savages and scenery that would entertain his friends at home, from Buchan. But with the death of Buchan, Parkinson was called upon to do the work of both men, and was thus torn … between the needs of the scientists and the tastes of the grand tourist. And in this he foreshadowed the experience of many artists who were to follow him into the Pacific.¹³

Although still producing ‘drawings of savages and scenery’, Parkinson continued to focus on natural history subjects, in particular botanical matter. He would sketch plant specimens as they were collected during the field work of the voyage, making some of these sketches into finished drawings back on board ship. However, in some cases he made sufficient notes and partial colouring on the sketch to enable him to finish it at a later date. The great number of new and extraordinary plants in Australia meant he was only able to make outline drawings of most of these.¹⁴  As Parkinson died of fever on the return part of the journey, many of these drawings were completed several years later by other artists, including Frederick Polydore Nodder and John Frederick Miller.¹⁵

For the scientific community, the overall success of Cook’s voyage was to inspire many similar voyages during the early nineteenth century. The next of these to venture into northern Australian waters was that of Nicolas Baudin (1800–04). This voyage had a greater emphasis on science than its predecessors and included a massive scientific team of more than twenty men, among them three artists.¹⁶  However, when the expedition arrived at Mauritius in March 1801, the three artists, Jacques Milbert (landscape painter), Louis Lebrun (architectural draughtsman) and Michel Garnier (genre painter), disembarked along with a number of sailors and scientists. This was an indication of the unhappy start to the journey, due to a number of factors including Baudin being ‘a poor navigator’, who ‘paid little attention to the health of his men, and was quite out of sympathy with the work of the scientists’.¹⁷

The visual records of Baudin’s voyage were then passed to assistant gunners, Nicolas Petit (1777–1804) who was also a portrait painter, and Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1846) whose skills had been noticed from his drawings of fish and phosphorescent animals during the first part of the voyage.¹⁸  Throughout the journey Lesueur specialised in the illustration of marine fauna¹⁹ and continued to develop his skills to allow accurate and meticulous depiction of these creatures.²⁰  Cassiopea andromeda 1804–06 is testament to the level of his expertise. Lesueur’s close association with naturalist François Peron was also a significant factor in the development of his knowledge of zoology, and of marine fauna in particular. Peron’s enthusiasm for this area of zoology is summed up in his comment:

… long has the study of molluscs and soft marine animals been neglected by naturalists and explorers. Yet some of these animals in their exotic shapes, unique structure, beautiful colours and variety of habitat, richly deserve the attention of the enlightened community.²¹

Petit comprehensively documented the Australian Aborigine, particularly in Tasmania. His interaction with Aborigines in northern Australia was very limited, as he spent most time in this area off the coast in the north-west region.

Baudin’s expedition was unlike any previous European expedition touching on Australia in its close attention to the study of a native people. The French philosopher Joseph-Marie Degerando, who provided guidelines for the observation of Aboriginal people encountered by Baudin, recognised that the idea of the ‘noble savage’ had distorted the true study of people in indigenous societies … the French relied heavily on visual observations and produced an extensive record of the Aborigines.²²

This approach is evident when comparing Petit’s depiction of Aborigines with those produced by William Westall during the parallel voyage of the Investigator. Westall’s representations were still in the ‘noble savage’ model.

The Investigator (1801–03) left Britain under the command of Matthew Flinders to survey the northern coast of Australia that had not been visited by Cook. The crew included a scientific team of six men, including landscape artist William Westall (1781–1850) and natural history artist Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826).

Bauer is considered by many as the greatest-ever natural history artist. His drawings, made during the voyage of the Investigator and the finished watercolours completed on his return to London, are exceptional in their detail. To assist in recording each of the many specimens during the limited time on land, Bauer developed his own special technique. He would make very detailed pencil sketches on location and colour code them according to his own system.²³  A particularly complex system was used on the Investigator drawings, with their originals having numbers into the 900s.²⁴  Bauer is also unique in that:

he made a practice of drawing not only leaf and flower, to which many botanical draughtsmen confined their attentions, but also included sections and diagrams of buds, seed-pods, petals, and the roots of plants.²⁵

Bauer produced over two thousand drawings during the voyage.²⁶   The majority of these document botanical specimens, and it is for these that he is better known, although he demonstrates equal skill in his drawings of zoological specimens.

In contrast, landscape artist William Westall completed a hundred and forty watercolours and sketches,²⁷ with the majority of these pencil sketches depicting landscape subjects, and some additional botanical sketches, portraits of Aborigines, and coastal profiles. His limited output is often attributed to boredom and an overall dissatisfaction with the Australian scenery, as documented in a letter to Joseph Banks explaining his delay in returning to London. In this letter he comments on the ‘barren coast’ of Australia and the lack of opportunity to ‘employ’ his pencil.²⁸

Despite this, Westall’s coastal profiles are considered to be some of the best ever produced. The influence of the scientific team, particularly naturalist Robert Brown, and Ferdinand Bauer, together with Flinders’s interest in geology, is apparent in Westall’s close observation of vegetation and terrain.²⁹

Westall was commissioned in 1809 by the Admiralty to produce nine oil paintings of scenes of New Holland, of which View of Sir Edward Pellew’s group, Northern Territory, December 1802, View of Cape Townsend taken from Mount Westall, March 1802 and View of Port Bowen, Queensland, August 1802 are examples, which he completed in about 1812. These paintings also demonstrate Westall’s interest in scientific disciplines, although the scenes have been enhanced somewhat from the pencil drawings produced during the voyage.

In View of Port Bowen, Queensland, August 1802, Westall has introduced various elements of the picturesque tradition, most notably the dark foreground receding to a light background and the formulaic arrangement of plants and rock formations. The inclusion of Aborigines, certain geological features and specimens of native flora and fauna indicates variations from his pencil drawing of this scene and may be a combination of several drawings. This was a common practice employed by Westall in order to ‘characterise the country depicted’³⁰ or produce a ‘typical landscape’, and is evident in many of his oil paintings associated with the Investigator voyage.

Shaping the Coastline

The navigational work begun by the earlier voyages of discovery was continued by a series of expeditions into northern Australia, commencing with Phillip Parker King in 1817.

These voyages were a response to the political situation at the time — the end of the Napoleonic wars and the reign of Queen Victoria introduced a period of relative peace, allowing Britain to ‘direct its resources to science and, in particular, to hydrography’.¹  There was also the belief that this ‘vast unknown land would amply reward further investigation’.²   The voyage by King, along with several others, was to produce large bodies of artwork, at times by professional artists but more usually by naval officers.

During these voyages, British naval officers were able to contribute visual documentation, as they had received training at the Drawing School established by the Royal Navy in 1693.³  In addition to this, with the growing popularity of watercolour painting in the early 1800s, many naval and army officers undertook private instruction, allowing them to attempt a broader range of subjects.⁴

Phillip Parker King (1791–1856) spent five years, firstly on the Mermaid and then on the Bathurst, completing the surveying work along the northern coast begun by Matthew Flinders. King was a keen artist and his extended time in northern waters (1817–22) resulted in a large body of watercolours typically depicting coastal views, but with ships and crew occasionally included, and some natural history works. They cover a broad region of the north from the Great Barrier Reef through to the north of Western Australia.

‘King’s most original discoveries were on the barren north-west coast of Australia, which he visited on each of his four major voyages’.⁵  These journeys provided information that led to the British government establishing the first European settlement north of the Tropic of Capricorn —Fort Dundas in 1824.⁶

This settlement was followed by Fort Wellington in 1827 and Port Essington in 1838, both on the Cobourg Peninsula. The three settlements were abandoned a relatively short time after their establishment, with Port Essington surviving the longest period of eleven years. Many ships used this settlement as a base while undertaking charting work along the north coast and it is the most well documented by artworks.

Owen Stanley (1811–50) and John MacArthur (1791–1862), Port Essington’s commander during the entire eleven years, recorded the settlement extensively, including the damage sustained during a hurricane in 1839. All three settlements proved to be ‘plagued with problems’⁷ and it appears that King’s reports may have been considerably optimistic.

As a harbour Port Essington is equal, if not superior, to any I ever saw; and from its proximity to the Moluccas and New Guinea and its being in a direct line of communication between Port Jackson and Singapore … it must, at no very distant period, become a place of great trade and of very considerable importance.⁸

Also assigned to survey the coastline of northern Australia was the Beagle, under the command firstly of J. C. Wickham (1837–41) and then the first Lieutenant John Lort Stokes (1841–43). Although artists such as Augustus Earle and Conrad Martens had been present at various times during the Beagle’s earlier South American voyage, there were no professional artists on board when the Beagle left for Australia.⁹

In the absence of any professional artist, amateur natural history artist Lt James Barker Emery (1794/95–1889) provided a substantial number of accomplished drawings. He produced many detailed watercolours during the voyage, with a particular emphasis on the varieties of fish encountered.

The Beagle acquired a professional artist in 1841 with the arrival of Graham Gore (?–1847). Prior to this, Commander J. C. Wickham, Lt John Lort Stokes and assistant surveyor Lewis Roper Fitzmaurice, along with Lt James Emery, had produced drawings and sketches of various coastal features and animals of particular interest. However, ‘with the arrival of Gore they could relax these efforts, knowing that the pictorial record of the Beagle’s voyage was now in competent hands’.¹⁰  Drawings produced by Gore were to form the primary visual component of J. Lort Stokes’s Discoveries in Australia.

During the survey of the Victoria River in 1839, Stokes was speared by an Aboriginal man and this incident was the basis for a painting by naval officer Richard Beechey (1808–95).¹¹  The work Lt J. Stokes speared in the lungs while discovering the Victoria River, Australia 1839, dated 1863, must have been painted from illustrations and detailed accounts of the expedition for although Beechey sailed to the Pacific he is not known to have visited mainland Australia.¹²

In contrast to Beechey, naval officer and artist Owen Stanley spent extensive periods in northern Australia, firstly as commander on the Britomart which sailed with the Alligator to establish the settlement at Port Essington in 1838, and then on the Rattlesnake in 1846 to survey the southern coastline of Papua New Guinea. Under Stanley’s command, the Rattlesnake also provided an escort for Edmund Kennedy’s ill-fated northern expedition, landing his party at Rockingham Bay in April 1848.

Stanley is characterised as an ‘unsympathetic character, reserved and self-centred, and violent tempered, yet gifted with many good qualities and achieving considerable success as a naval officer’¹³ and artist. He is regarded as ‘the best shipboard naval observer’, and he produced many watercolour works that provide an unparalleled documentation of northern Australia during the 1830s and 1840s.¹⁴  His artistic pursuits benefited from his experiences on earlier voyages where there were at times other artists on board, including in one instance P. P. King.¹⁵  Also travelling on the Rattlesnake were fellow artists of Stanley, Dr John Thomson, senior surgeon, T. H. Huxley, assistant surgeon, J. MacGillivray, naturalist,¹⁶ and professional artist Sir Oswald Walters Brierly (1817–94).

Brierly was a marine and natural history painter who sailed to Australia in 1841. He remained in New South Wales, managing a whaling operation at Eden, until 1848, when he joined Owen Stanley on the Rattlesnake.¹⁷   Brierly, along with Stanley, was prolific in his documentation of the coast and islands and activities of the crew. His works from his time aboard the Rattlesnake are detailed watercolour and pencil sketches, which vary from much of his general artistic output of romantic paintings of ships often experiencing dramatic weather conditions.

In 1842–45, under the command of Captain F. P. Blackwood, the corvette Fly undertook a hydrographic survey of the north-eastern Australian coast.¹⁸  The scientific observer and unofficial artist on this voyage was Edwin Augustus Porcher (?–1878). Porcher produced many accomplished watercolours during this voyage, documenting the scientific accomplishments of the team, and the settlement at Port Essington, as well as various landscape and ethnographic subjects.

Up until the late 1840s, visual recording in northern Australia had largely concentrated on coastal areas, with the exception of the Beagle’s voyage which had provided documentation on some exploration of the major river systems (they had hoped to discover an inland sea). It was not until 1855 that any interior expeditions in the region produced significant quantities of artwork. In 1855, the Royal Geographical Society in London instigated an expedition that was ‘to investigate the sources of the Victoria River in northern Australia, to provide information about the countries (sic) interior’.¹⁹  Artist Thomas Baines (1820–75) was commissioned draughtsman and artist with the scientific team on this expedition led by Augustus Charles Gregory.

During Gregory's 1855–56 expedition Baines was prolific in his documentation ‘of the topography of the country, of natural history subjects and of important events which occurred during the expedition’. These were largely pencil, crayon and watercolour sketches, some of which were developed into paintings at the conclusion of the expedition.²⁰  This graphic record of Gregory’s journey is considered to be ‘unparalleled in contemporary Australian exploration’.²¹

Among other professional artists who documented exploration of the interior was Samuel Thomas Gill (1819–80). These expeditions were substantially smaller in scale and generally in the southern districts of Victoria and South Australia. Many of these visual records were later published. Gill also produced artworks documenting expeditions on which he was not present, such as (Burke and Wills arrival at the Gulf of Carpentaria) n.d. This was quite a common practice at the time, with other notable artists producing sketches to illustrate the books written by explorers.

Settlers and Tourists

A wave of settlement occurred in northern Australia during the 1860s and 1870s as pastoralists took up areas of land for stock, including both cattle and sheep. This was in response to positive reports from recent explorations, and also various government schemes, most notably one by the South Australian government instigated after annexing the Northern Territory in 1863.¹   The discovery of gold deposits in north Queensland, the Kimberley region and near Darwin, as well as other mineral deposits, led to a further increase in the population and the number of townships, which were beginning to develop during this period and into the 1880s.

In addition to settlers and prospectors, professional artists began to travel north, often as part of a larger world tour, along with professional people, some of whom were amateur artists. However, despite increasing documentation of the interior of the region and the development of townships during this period, there was a steady decline in the quantity of artistic work, as the camera came into more common usage. This development contributed to a shift towards more expressive approaches in the work of artists as they travelled north in search of the picturesque and exotic.

Little is known of the artist E. P. Bedwell. However, it appears from his north Queensland paintings of 1872–73 that he may have undertaken a tour in this region.

More is known about amateur artist William Allom (1832–1902) who arrived in Australia in 1852 and journeyed north, arriving at Rockhampton in 1864. During the following year he travelled to the Ravenswood diggings, where he established himself as a newspaper proprietor and auctioneer. Allom spent an extended period in this area, living in Charters Towers from 1877 and becoming a well-known artist in the township during the 1880s and 1890s.²  His painting, Townsville [painted from Evans Deakin slipway, Ross Creek] 1884, is typical of his work in its naïve approach and choice of subject matter.

One of the few trained artists to have lived in the north during this time was Edward Bevan (1854–98), who was also a surveyor, journalist and architect. After a short while in Mackay, he arrived in Townsville in the 1870s and worked there as an architect, journalist and illustrator.³  Bevan’s painting Castle Hill 1886 demonstrates the artistic trend of this period towards an emphasis on the quality of light and preference for the dramatic times of the day such as sunrise and sunset. The particularly graphic nature of the buildings depicted in Castle Hill is similar to that in other works produced by surveyors. However, the latter were generally pencil and watercolour sketches.

At this time northern Queensland was becoming a popular holiday destination, due in part to the fact that it was accessible by steamer and within reasonable proximity to major coastal towns.⁴  Along with the holiday makers travelling north were a number of professional artists including Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902) and Marian Ellis Rowan (1848–1922)

Based in Brisbane, Isaac Walter Jenner is thought to have visited north Queensland about 1898. An untrained artist, Jenner migrated to Brisbane from England in the mid 1880s, and he depicted the city and its busy waterways in much of his work. The impressionist style typically associated with his painting is evident in Townsville c.1900.

Marian Ellis Rowan was a ‘flower painter’ from Melbourne who ‘opted for a life of travel and adventure’ after meeting English traveller and artist Marianne North in 1880. Rowan was influenced by the importance North placed on painting a subject in its natural environment, and she travelled to northern Queensland a total of six times, with her first trip in 1887.⁵   Finding the tropical flowers ‘more beautiful than all’, Rowan comprehensively documented the flora of this region.⁶  More than a thousand of her paintings formed part of Australia’s largest art exhibition, held in Sydney in 1920.⁷  The inclusion of an insect in (Melaleuca, Cooktown) c.1891 is typical of many of Rowan’s works, and is largely for aesthetic reasons, to ‘complement and enliven the main plant subject matter’⁸ rather than for scientific accuracy. Rowan’s paintings are generally limited in their value as botanical illustrations as they lack the necessary detail and accuracy.⁹

A significant contribution to the visual records of this period was made by amateur women artists living on rural properties. Unfortunately, much of this material has been lost over time. The reason that some works did survive was often due to the fact that they were sent to distant relatives. This is the case with Annie Pring Marten and Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe, both Queensland artists.

Annie Pring Marten settled on the sugar plantation Branscombe, located in the Mackay district, in 1870. The plantation house, Winterbourne, which featured in many of Marten’s watercolours, was built in 1873 but was demolished only seven years later owing to a termite infestation. The watercolours by Marten, painted about 1873, were sent back to England to inform relatives of their life in north Queensland, and were returned to the City of Mackay in 1968. Marten’s work is typical of that of many women watercolourists during this period, with the emphasis on family and property life.

Also based on a property in north Queensland was Lucy Gray who lived in the remote Flinders River region. Gray kept an illustrated journal of her life which contains numerous small sketches documenting the period from September 1868 to November 1872. These sketches depict a range of subjects including landscape, property scenes and people.¹⁰

Property life was a theme that also appeared in the artwork of Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe (1850–1928). Neville-Rolfe visited Alpha Station in central Queensland from 1883 to 1885. While at Alpha, she was quite prolific, producing about eighty-seven watercolours depicting life on the cattle property, and a number of plant and animal studies. They are works that ‘do not hint at hardship. She seems to be having a good time, in the best tradition of the stiff upper lip’.¹¹

Neville-Rolfe’s relatively short period at Alpha Station as a guest would, it seems, have not only influenced her interpretation of life but also encouraged her to continue to produce work. Settlers would often document new regions only during the early years; then they would lose interest in depicting the landscape through art, as the daily reality of existence removed the beauty of the Eucalypt.¹²          

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Although documenting a limited number of geographical locations beyond the coastline, these colonial visions of northern Australia reveal much about the region during the period 1770–1914. They provide valuable insights into the historical issues, particularly those related to exploration and settlement, and the way in which these issues were experienced in the north. It was male artists, aboard ships or on expeditions into the interior, who provided the bulk of this documentation, although by the late nineteenth century female artists were also making a valuable contribution, particularly in relation to the establishment of the pastoral industry. This vast and diverse geographical region is represented as both an exotic and rich paradise and, conversely, a dramatic wilderness fraught with difficulties. The visual interpretations produced by both amateur and professional artists range between these extremes, and as a body of work depict northern Australia as indeed a ‘blighted paradise’.