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69 Max Angus born 1914 'Fishing Boats, Queenscliff, Victoria' 1954 watercolour 27.7 x 37.8 Max Angus is one of Australia's best-known watercolour painters. Although this medium is concerned with the rapid transcription of fleeting effects of light, Angus seeks the permanent truths underlying the changeable surface appearance of nature. Boats are a favourite subject for Angus, and he uses them as a means of integrating the natural world with that of humanity. Fishing Boats, Queenscliff is a perfect example, with the human element, the fishing boats, suspended between tranquil water and limpid air. AG315 | |
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70 Thomas Bock 1790/93 - 1855 Wave study (from 1820s sketchbook) 1823 pencil Gift of Mrs J Rogerson (the artist's great grandaughter), 1965 Thomas Bock was no stranger to the sea, having endured the long, perilous and miserable 12,000 mile voyage to Van Diemen's Land as a convict in 1823. It was during the 126-day voyage, when for days on end nothing was visible except the rolling swell of the ocean, that Bock took the sea as a sketching subject. Back on dry land, the artist soon gained the respect of the colonial authorities and recognition as an engraver and portrait painter. His later subjects included not only Van Diemen's Land society but also its outcasts: condemned prisoners, bushrangers and the Tasmanian Aborigines. AG1390.1 |
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71 Dean Bowen born 1957 'Dreams of a sea captain' 1992 drypoint and aquatint 44.3 x 43.9 Dean Bowen is a firm believer in the adage that art is for everyone. This belief is fundamental to his printmaking; there are no obscure artistic or textual references whose meaning can only be understood by a small percentage of viewers. Dreams of a Sea Captain is exactly that which the title describes. This drypoint captures Bowen's quirky humour and imaginative perception, presenting a visual pun as the smoke billows from the chimney in the shape of a ship. Yet despite its apparent simplicity the work is richly dark and oddly mysterious. Who is the sea captain? Why is he stuck in the little cottage? AG5716 |
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72 G.T.W.B. Boyes 1786 - 1853 1825 pencil and ink 25.7 x 33.5 Gift of Mr C E Boyes, 1940 G T W B Boyes sailed to Sydney via Hobart Town in 1823 as a passenger on a convict transport to take up a posting with the New South Wales Commissariat, relocating to Van Diemen's Land in 1826 as Colonial Auditor. He recorded his experiences in both colonies in great detail, his diaries and sketches presenting a unique and valuable record of early colonial life. AG701.1 |
73 David Bromley born 1960 'To the horizon' 1996 acrylic on perspex with found frame 29.8 (diameter) The circular wooden frame surrounding David Bromley's painting To the Horizon suggests the sensation of looking out of a boat's porthole. This porthole-frame acts as a distancing device, even though the boy seems to be beckoning us to come with him while he rows to the horizon. The bright colours and distinct black lines evoke the world of Boys' Own Adventure sea stories in which anything can happen and usually does. The style and colours seem to transport the viewer back into a world of childhood, cartoonesque nostalgia. At the same time there is a more ominous mood: why is the boy fleeing? where is he headed? will he survive? AG5930 | |
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74 Knut Bull 1811 - 1889 Study of an albatross (from sketchbook) 1846 pencil and watercolour Plimsoll Bequest, 1997 On a visit to London in 1845, the Norwegian artist Knut Bull was involved in the doomed conspiracy of forging a foreign banknote and sentenced to fourteen years transportation to Norfolk Island. He was subsequently relocated to Hobart Town, where he established a reputation as a painter of portraits and landscapes. This sketchbook is from his voyage of transportation on the John Calvin. Bull painted a number of watercolours of ocean birds in seascape settings in the sketchbook of Surgeon Superintendent Henry Kelsall (himself an accomplished amateur artist). Inscribed on each page is a description of the bird, as well as the latitude and longitude of the ship at the time the watercolour sketch was executed. An inscription by Kelsall inside the front cover of the sketchbook reads as follows: "The figures of oceanic birds in this book were drawn from life on board the convict ship "John Calvin" by Kanute Bull an unfortunate Swede transported from the Old Bailey for forging in London certain Stockholm banknotes. I have never seen in any Museum an albatross or a peterel (sic) correctly mounted, the legs of all these birds are so thin and weak that they cannot stand erect longer than two or three seconds, but on attempting to do so they fall forwards on their noses, trying to break their fall by shuffling their wings and sprawling on the deck of the ship the bird therefore assumes the posture delineated very correctly by Kanute Bull...I caught a great number of these birds by veering out a line and hook baited with a bit of white fat of pork from the stern window of my cabin. The hook for albatrosses being a small cod hook and for the smaller birds a mackerel hook which never wounded the horny beak of the bird but merely hitched on the hard hook of the upper mandible and dropped off immediately the bird was hauled on board. Three different species of albatross are figured."The black-browed albatross (Diomedea melanophrys) a common bird off the coast of Tasmania. It breeds on Macquarie and Heard Island, laying a single egg in a large nest made of mud reinforced with plant material and feathers. Bull's (or Kelsall's) identification of this bird as a yellow-nosed albatross (Diomedea chlororhynchos) is incorrect. AG5951.1 |
75 Jeff Burgess born 1954 'Figure with boat head holding two fish' 1994-96 cast bronze 13 x 9 x 9 Jeff Burgess is best known for his taut, semi-abstract gouaches, drawings and prints. The whimsical feel of some of these works on paper extends to his exploration of sculpture, the modelled figures often having bizarre extrusions or encrustations. A connoisseur of African tribal art, he is evidently influenced by both its formal compression and its ritual power. Figure with boat head holding two fish is a marine fetish. The small, squat figure holds tightly to two large fish (one under each arm) in a contemplative stance. The humour broadens by his giving the figure a boat for a head; is he contemplating the sea, or is he a dumb hull-headed fisherman? AG5934 | |
76 David Burns born 1959 'Memory Cabinet' 1993 - 94 painted wood and glass cabinet, photographs, and mirror 120.5 x 222.5 x 81.5 In his work Memory Cabinet, David Burns plays with traditional museum display methods and representations of the ocean's surface. The vitrine is a copy of a nineteenth century display case from the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston and the "waves" are contorted photographs of the sea. How do you put the sea on display in a museum? AG5819 | |
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77 John Callow 1822 - 1878 Off Dover 1850 pencil and watercolour 43.4 x 80.6 Morton Allport Bequest, 1955 John Callow trained in Paris, and after his return to England in 1844 held a variety of drawing teaching positions at such institutions as the Addiscombe Military Academy, the Royal Military Academy and Queen's College, London. He was renowned for his coastal watercolours and travelled widely through England, Wales, Normandy, Scotland and the Channel Islands looking for suitable subjects. AG340 |
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78 Jack Carington Smith 1908 - 1972 (Study - ship's deck) pencil 16.1 x 19.9 Purchased, 1986 Jack Carington Smith was renowned for being an avid sketcher; on bus tickets, shopping lists, envelopes and pieces of scrap paper the artist would transcribe fragments of visual experience. Study - ship's deck is a pencil drawing on a lined piece of paper torn from a notebook, an intimate and ephemeral impression. A glimpse of the sea can be seen beyond the ship's railing, with a capstan and a life ring adding to the nautical atmosphere. This work may have been drawn during the artist's extensive travels by ship to Europe and the United Kingdom, but is more likely to have come from one of his wanders around the Hobart docks. AG4840 |
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79 Simon Cuthbert born 1964 Tumbledown, Tasman Island 1991 photograph, silver gelatin print Gift of the artist, 1995 In his photograph Tumbledown, Tasman Island, Simon Cuthbert recreates perceptions of a voyage sailed by thousands of convicts from Hobart to the dismal penal settlement of Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula over one hundred and fifty years ago. The cold, gloomy, sea-spumey view is as through a ship's porthole, and emphasises the penal authorities' use of the harsh landscape as a natural barrier for the unnatural privations and punishments of the model prison. AG5768.4 |
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80 George Davis born 1930 Three albatrosses 1977 charcoal Purchased with the assistance of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board, 1978 Between 1976 and 1978, on commission from the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board, George Davis spent five months travelling around Macquarie, Goose, Fisher and Albatross islands in Bass Strait, interpreting their landscape and bird life. It was while exploring these rugged, isolated outer islands that Davis made this charcoal drawing, appropriately enough executed on Albatross Island. Bird life has been a continuing interest for Davis, who has said that their sounds, shapes, movements and presence have struck a deep response in him; he has found himself drawing birds in London and Switzerland, and now Tasmania. While taking native bird life as a subject, Davis is not concerned with the detail of scientific illustration, but with movement and attitude. AG2992 |
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81 William Duke 1815 - 1853 Offshore whaling with the "Aladdin" and "Jane" 1849 oil on canvas 86.8 x 113.5 Purchased, 1978 William Duke and his wife sailed to Sydney as assisted immigrants in 1840. From Sydney, Duke travelled to New Zealand thence to Hobart Town, arriving in 1845. At this time the whaling industry was just past its peak, having brought unprecedented wealth to the colony in the previous decades. With a particular clientele in mind (that of the wealthy shipowner and captain) Duke specialised in painting ship portraits and scenes of the whale fishery.Offshore whaling with the "Aladdin" and "Jane" is an action-packed battle scene of man versus nature. Here are the sailors risking their lives against the huge bulk of the thrashing whale and the danger of the sea (many whalers could not swim), and the solid, identifiable whaling ships, symbols of prosperity and enterprise thanks to the barrels full of oil which a dead whale provided. AG2997 |
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82 William Duke 1815 - 1853 The whaler "Aladdin" c1848 oil on canvas 56 x 76 Purchased, 1929 William Duke and his wife sailed to Sydney as assisted immigrants in 1840. From Sydney, Duke travelled to New Zealand thence to Hobart Town, arriving in 1845. At this time the whaling industry was just past its peak, having brought unprecedented wealth to the colony in the previous decades. With a particular clientele in mind (that of the wealthy shipowner and captain) Duke specialised in painting ship portraits and scenes of the whale fishery. AG5877 |
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83 Cedric Emanuel born 1906 'Hobart 2 ' 1931 (printed 1981) etching and aquatint 41.8 x 32.9 Cedric Emanuel has worked for most of his life as a freelance artist; he has illustrated more than fifty books. Hobart 2 is an etching originally produced in 1931, with a second edition published fifty years later. The strong lines in the work draw our eyes along the bowsprit toward a middle ground of sailcloth folds catching the light. Emanuel's view is taken from Fisherman's Wharf, encompassing the old Custom House building (now part of the TMAG) with the outline of Mount Wellington seen rising above the city spires and buildings, the whole seen through a criss-cross perspective of rigging and masts. AG3293 |
84 Franco Fontana born 1933 'Orizzonte' 1976 photograph, type C colour print 19.9 x 29.6 Franco Fontana [Artist] Despite its deceptively simple appearance, Franco Fontana's photograph Orizzonte is a complex and sophisticated work, which recalls (amongst other things) the Romantic painting of the early nineteenth century, in particular Caspar David Freidrich's Monk contemplating the Ocean. In Fontana's work we are presented with the most elemental of subjects, a horizon, or to be more precise a horizon at sea, where the proportions of sea and sky are almost identical. The suggestion of the limitless and vast quality of the ocean is profound, and the work imparts a meditative sense of harmony and balance. The reductive strategy employed by Fontana also means the work operates on an abstract level. AG2832 | |
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85 Haughton Forrest 1825 - 1925 Plymouth pilot boat and yacht "Egeria" - wreck of the "Marie-Louise" off Eddystone 1881 oil on canvas 46.5 x 77 Purchased, 1954 Haughton Forrest immigrated to Tasmania in 1876. A prolific painter of maritime views, Forrest painted both static, faithful ship portraits and more imaginative, Romantic maritime dramas. A keen yachtsman himself, Forrest's precise detailing shows that he knows about these things from hands-on experience. Indeed, the extreme precision of Forrest's technique gives his works an almost photographic quality. Plymouth pilot boat and yacht " Egeria" - wreck of the "Marie-Louise" depicts a celebrated wreck in the waters around Plymouth Harbour, England. Amidst the leaden depths of perilous seas flounders the French ship the Marie Louise, while to its rescue sails Captain Forrest's own yacht and the pilot boat. It is an image showing the inherent danger of the sea in the desperate plight of a stricken ship, rendered lifeless by its splintered masts and limp hanging sails. The facts translate into the figures that in the early nineteenth century the chance of loss of life at sea was five times greater than that of a car accident fatality today. AG321 |
86 Christine Forsyth born 1949 '"Excella", Plimsoll Line' 1982 Colour screenprint 34.7 x 51.7 Christine Forsyth is a printmaker whose work juxtaposes shapes and textures from natural and urban environments. Excella, Plimsoll Line is a colour photo screenprint depicting a close up of the coarse, weathered boards and flaking paint of the deteriorating hulk of the ferry Excella. The Plimsoll Line is the mark on a ship's hull which sits above the waterline and indicates the limit to which a ship may be loaded. At the end of a useful life traversing the Derwent, the Excella faced years of abandonment and neglect in Prince of Wales Bay; vandals sunk her three times, showing no regard for keeping the Plimsoll Line, as shipping law dictates, above water. AG3722 | |
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87 Patricia Giles born 1932 Sea shells (one of fourteen watercolours from the book "A World of its Own") c1975-76 watercolour 42.3 x 56 Art Foundation of Tasmania , 1996 Love of the Tasmanian landscape has been a major source of inspiration in Patricia Giles' work. Sea Shells is one of a series of watercolours produced between 1975 and 1976 for an anthology of poems and paintings. Giles and poet James McAuley combined their talents in a celebration of the Coles Bay environment, published as A World of Its Own. The fifteen images in the suite include a range of subjects from wide landscape to close details of shells, rock pools and bush; this watercolour was selected as the book's cover illustration. AG5856.1 |
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88 John Glover 1767 - 1849 (Four studies - Scarborough beach ?) watercolour 25.2 x 17.2 Gift of Mrs J S Gibson, 1985 When the ship the Thomas Laurie weighed anchor at Gravesend in 1830 it included amongst its passengers the painter John Glover and his wife and son travelling to the distant, isolated Van Diemen's Land to begin a new stage of their life. Glover was then sixty-three years of age. Having at one time enjoyed considerable fame and fortune at home in England, by the 1820s his popularity had begun to wane and his work was met with increasing criticism. The family endured an arduous six month voyage to Hobart Town, characterised by rough weather; Glover himself was particularly affected by the heat and suffered from sea sickness. These watercolour sketches (probably English, possibly of the coast at Scarborough) show Glover's observation of the movement of the sea. Glover understood the structure of waves, currents, surges, the spray of foam, the sheer power of breaking water and the restlessness of the sea. AG4435.13 |
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89 John Glover 1767 - 1849 (Two studies - Scarborough beach ?) watercolour 16.9 x 17.1 Gift of Mrs J S Gibson, 1985 When the ship the Thomas Laurie weighed anchor at Gravesend in 1830 it included amongst its passengers the painter John Glover and his wife and son travelling to the distant, isolated Van Diemen's Land to begin a new stage of their life. Glover was then sixty-three years of age. Having at one time enjoyed considerable fame and fortune at home in England, by the 1820s his popularity had begun to wane and his work was met with increasing criticism. The family endured an arduous six month voyage to Hobart Town, characterised by rough weather; Glover himself was particularly affected by the heat and suffered from sea sickness. These watercolour sketches (probably English, possibly of the coast at Scarborough) show Glover's observation of the movement of the sea. Glover understood the structure of waves, currents, surges, the spray of foam, the sheer power of breaking water and the restlessness of the sea. AG4435.15 a |
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90 John Gould Diomedea exulans (Wandering Albatross) c1840s lithograph, hand-coloured 35.7 x 54.5 (Image and sheet) Purchased, 1979 John Gould was a celebrated orinthologist, artist and entrepreneur who published many volumes of illustrated natural history, including the monumental Birds of Australia (1840-1848). As most of Gould's work was based on observations and collections made during journeys of scientific exploration, Birds of Australia was assembled during a trip undertaken by Gould and his family to Australia (1838-1840). Van Diemen's Land was the starting point for Gould's foray into the Australian landscape, to observe and record birds and mammals in their natural habitat. He travelled around Hobart, Storm Bay, the Derwent to Macquarie Plains, Recherche Bay, Launceston, George Town and the Bass Strait Islands, collecting specimens from each location. From VDL Gould moved on to the mainland colonies where he conducted extensive fieldwork, returning to England to compile his notes into the 681 hand-coloured lithographs which are Birds of Australia. AG3134 |
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91 Charles Dickson Gregory 1850 - 1920 S.S. "Loongana" pencil, watercolour and chinese white 30.3 x 48.6 Gift of G Bradley, 1932 A certain confusion surrounds the identity of the artist of this work; it could be either of two Charles Gregorys, as both were painting around the same time and both were known for their maritime paintings. One lived in Melbourne and the other moved from Melbourne to study in London, yet this really does not help matters, as the Loongana was built in Dumbarton, and could quite easily have been painted in British waters before travelling to Australia. The turbine SS Loongana was a fast turbine steamer which ran between Launceston and Melbourne, having been designed especially for this run, with accommodation for 380 passengers and twelve cars. She was the forerunner of the Spirit of Tasmania and was named from a Tasmanian Aboriginal word meaning to be swift or to fly. During her thirty years of service, the Loongana was known as "the greyhound of Bass Strait", clocking up more than one million miles and carrying 500,000 passengers between the two destinations. In her long career, the Loongana tallied up many firsts, being the first turbine-driven passenger cargo ship ever seen in Australia in 1904, the first to cross the equator and the first to attempt a long ocean voyage. It was the Loongana which made the record Bass Strait crossing from Melbourne to Burnie on the occasion of Mt Lyell disaster, in 13 hours and 25 minutes. AG2376 |
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92 Samuel Prout Hill 1821 - 1861 (The launching of the "Isabella Brown") 1859 pencil, watercolour and chinese white 22.5 x 31.6 Purchased, 1954 Samuel Prout Hill immigrated to Sydney and then to Hobart Town, arriving in 1848. Working in the Survey Department as a draughtsman and then as a clerk, Hill sketched and painted in his spare time, favouring works of a maritime theme and executing a variety of ship scenes. The barque Isabella Brown was built for Thomas Brown, being named after his daughter (she later became Mrs Gellibrand, and the mother of Major General Sir John Gellibrand). The ship was launched from Ross's shipyard, near Secheron House in Battery Point, on 7 February, 1859 and was built of blue-gum timber, copper fastened and iron kneed. A model of the Isabella Brown is on display in the Museum's maritime gallery upstairs. AG329 |
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93 Mabel Hookey 1871 - 1953 (Men on a boat deck c1929 watercolour 17.9 x 25.5 Dora Hookey Bequest, 1961 Mabel Hookey was an extraordinary woman. As well as being an accomplished painter in oil and watercolour, she was one of the first female journalists in Tasmania (at one time she was the sub-editor of the Launceston Daily Telegraph), she managed the large family farm and wrote and illustrated books on Tasmanian history. Hookey lived in the age before mass air transport, and travelled by ship to Flinders Island, New South Wales, Queensland, and overseas to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. This series of watercolours are from one such journey, and are a nostalgic reminder of the leisurely romance of shipboard travel earlier this century. AG500 M |
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94 Mabel Hookey 1871 - 1953 (Woman in a deck chair aboard ship) pencil and watercolour 18.7 cm. x 27.6 Dora Hookey Bequest , 1961 Mabel Hookey was an extraordinary woman. As well as being an accomplished painter in oil and watercolour, she was one of the first female journalists in Tasmania (at one time she was the sub-editor of the Launceston Daily Telegraph), she managed the large family farm and wrote and illustrated books on Tasmanian history. Hookey lived in the age before mass air transport, and travelled by ship to Flinders Island, New South Wales, Queensland, and overseas to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. This series of watercolours are from one such journey, and are a nostalgic reminder of the leisurely romance of shipboard travel earlier this century. AG5287 |
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95 Mabel Hookey 1871 - 1953 (Boys by a boat) pencil and watercolour 17.3 cm. x 24.9 Dora Hookey Bequest , 1961 Mabel Hookey was an extraordinary woman. As well as being an accomplished painter in oil and watercolour, she was one of the first female journalists in Tasmania (at one time she was the sub-editor of the Launceston Daily Telegraph), she managed the large family farm and wrote and illustrated books on Tasmanian history. Hookey lived in the age before mass air transport, and travelled by ship to Flinders Island, New South Wales, Queensland, and overseas to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. This series of watercolours are from one such journey, and are a nostalgic reminder of the leisurely romance of shipboard travel earlier this century. AG5291 |
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96 Mabel Hookey 1871 - 1953 (On the boat deck) pencil and watercolour 17.3 cm. x 24.9 cm. (sight) Dora Hookey Bequest , 1961 Mabel Hookey was an extraordinary woman. As well as being an accomplished painter in oil and watercolour, she was one of the first female journalists in Tasmania (at one time she was the sub-editor of the Launceston Daily Telegraph), she managed the large family farm and wrote and illustrated books on Tasmanian history. Hookey lived in the age before mass air transport, and travelled by ship to Flinders Island, New South Wales, Queensland, and overseas to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. This series of watercolours are from one such journey, and are a nostalgic reminder of the leisurely romance of shipboard travel earlier this century. AG5292 |
97 Helen Hopcroft born 1971 '"Paradise" series' 1996 oil on three canvases 34.4 x 34.4 (each) Helen Hopcroft's work is intensely personal, strong and energetic, an essentially private and passionate vision. This vision incorporates imagery and emotion from daydreams, dreams and nightmares. The Paradise series is a sequence of three separate but related paintings. They share a common palette (primary colours and white highlights with strong black outlines) and a common iconography (a dream-like water world of sea, waves, stylised coracle boats, mermaids and fish). The intensity of emotion and imagination is literally quite visceral; within the dream-sea float severed heads and bodily organs. AG5869.2 | |
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98 W J Huggins 1781 - 1845 East Indiaman engraving, hand-coloured 20.6 x 25.6 Purchased, 1944 William Huggins was a marine painter who spent several years at sea as a sailor with the British East India Company, sailing to China and the Far East. After trading his sea legs for dry land, Huggins settled in London. Maintaining his links with the Company, Huggins was regularly employed to paint carefully detailed pictures of its ships. He exhibited his marine paintings at the Royal Academy from 1817 to 1844 and at the Royal Society of Artists from 1824 until his death in 1845. In 1834 he was appointed Marine Painter to "the Sailor King", William IV. AG1529 |
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99 W J Huggins 1781 - 1845 "Royal George" Yacht Conveying Her Majesty and Royal Consort to Edinburgh, August 1842 1843 engraving 40.3 x 64.2 Gift of George and Alison Richardson, 1994 William Huggins was a marine painter who spent several years at sea as a sailor with the British East India Company, sailing to China and the Far East. After trading his sea legs for dry land, Huggins settled in London. Maintaining his links with the Company, Huggins was regularly employed to paint carefully detailed pictures of its ships. He exhibited his marine paintings at the Royal Academy from 1817 to 1844 and at the Royal Society of Artists from 1824 until his death in 1845. In 1834 he was appointed Marine Painter to "the Sailor King", William IV. AG5699 |
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100 David James (working 1883 - 1897) The Combing Waves oil on canvas 63.5 x 127 Gift of Sir James Agnew, 1901 Technically polished but conventionally decorative, The Combing Waves is the work of David James, a British marine painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere during the 1880s and 1890s. AG103 |
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101 Bob Jenyns born 1944 'Blue cargo' 1996 polychromed wood 208 x 101 x 33 Bob Jenyns has said that he sees himself as a three-dimensional painter rather than as a sculptor, using wooden or metal structures as the vehicle for expressing colour and form. Blue Cargo is a large, geometric, Lego-esque polychromed wooden sculpture of an ocean freighter. Its cartoonish, reductive style is characteristic of the artist's work, reflecting the influences of pop and naïve art. Bob Jenyns' sculptures of 1996 were each produced and exhibited with an accompanying oil pastel drawing. Slyly mocking traditional studio practice, these "studies" are even more refined in their abstraction and reduction than the related three-dimensional works. Car Boat breaks up and flattens the sculpture Blue Cargo into the most primitive, fundamental kind of visual language. AG5931 |
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102 Bob Jenyns born 1944 oil pastel and pencil 65 x 92 'Car boat' 1996 Bob Jenyns has said that he sees himself as a three-dimensional painter rather than as a sculptor, using wooden or metal structures as the vehicle for expressing colour and form. Blue Cargo is a large, geometric, Lego-esque polychromed wooden sculpture of an ocean freighter. Its cartoonish, reductive style is characteristic of the artist's work, reflecting the influences of pop and naïve art. Bob Jenyns' sculptures of 1996 were each produced and exhibited with an accompanying oil pastel drawing. Slyly mocking traditional studio practice, these "studies" are even more refined in their abstraction and reduction than the related three-dimensional works. Car Boat breaks up and flattens the sculpture Blue Cargo into the most primitive, fundamental kind of visual language. AG5959 |
103 Barbie Kjar born 1957 'Pescado' 1993 drypoint 40.1 x 93 Barbie Kjar uses mythological symbols to construct pictures which are mystically evocative while combining or implying a story or narrative. In 1993, Kjar became increasingly aware of the North Head ferry, passing it every day on the way to art school and walking to and from her studio in Liverpool Street, beginning an ongoing romance with maritime imagery. Pescado is one of a series of etchings from the Boat Series which pursues the idea of journey and adventure; an inner, spiritual journey as much as physically crossing continents. Pescado shows Kjar's signature style of childlike immediacy, with its simplified forms, strong clear outlines and flattened perspective. The fish is a symbol of the spirit world, of sexuality and fertility, and here is depicted as divided, one part wild, abstract, textured and sensual and the other more introspective with its four faces. AG5657 | |
104 Eva Kubbos born 1928 'Rhythm of the Sea' 1980 watercolour 105.5 x 75.5 Eva Kubbos left Lithuania for Australia in the aftermath of World War II. Her style retains the influence of European abstract expressionism while responding to the light and colour of the Australian landscape. Mood and energy emanate from Kubbos' fusion of mysterious abstract colours and naturalistic forms. In Rhythm of the Sea a strong dark vertical engages with a series of blue crescent forms which echo the movement of tides and waves, suggesting the action of the sea pounding on the coast. AG3291 | |
105 Giorgio Lotti born 1937 'Luce e Mare 1' 1968 photograph, cibachrome print 25.9 x 39.4 In the early 1800s the Japanese printmaker Hokusai established the form of the wave as a formidable symbol in art of the power, grace, and harmony of the ocean, in his iconic colour woodblock print The Great Wave. This print, part of the Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji series, features an ominous cresting wave, poised on breaking. With tendril liquid tongues threatening the permanence and solidity of Mt Fuji in the background, and with longboats struggling through the sea around, Hokusai's print speaks both of the relationship of man to the sea and of the sea to land. Giorgio Lotti's two wave studies pay subtle homage to the Japanese artist's work. These sombre and meditative studies suggest the fleeting and transitory nature of the wave, with its gentle lines and rising form. Without the threatening power of the Japanese artist's work, Lotti's two photographs entitled Luce e Mare (Light and Sea) alludes to the potentially uncontainable force of the wave and that of the ocean. AG2840 | |
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106 Giorgio Lotti born 1937 'Luce e Mare 2' 1970 photograph, cibachrome print 26.3 x 39.6 In the early 1800s the Japanese printmaker Hokusai established the form of the wave as a formidable symbol in art of the power, grace, and harmony of the ocean, in his iconic colour woodblock print The Great Wave. This print, part of the Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji series, features an ominous cresting wave, poised on breaking. With tendril liquid tongues threatening the permanence and solidity of Mt Fuji in the background, and with longboats struggling through the sea around, Hokusai's print speaks both of the relationship of man to the sea and of the sea to land. Giorgio Lotti's two wave studies pay subtle homage to the Japanese artist's work. These sombre and meditative studies suggest the fleeting and transitory nature of the wave, with its gentle lines and rising form. Without the threatening power of the Japanese artist's work, Lotti's two photographs entitled Luce e Mare (Light and Sea) alludes to the potentially uncontainable force of the wave and that of the ocean. AG2841 |
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107 Bea Maddock born 1934 Trouwerner...the white ships came from the West and the sea of Darkness 1992 - 93 encaustic with pigment wash and cord on four canvases 130.6 x 184.5 x 5.2 (each canvas) Art Foundation of Tasmania, 1993 Bea Maddock was a passenger on the same voyage which took Jan Senbergs to Antarctica, yet her vision of the icy continent was restricted to fixed positions on shore or on the ship's deck, after she suffered a serious knee injury at Atlas Cove. This carries through to the sketches for Trouwerner...the white ships came from the West and the Sea of Darkness which were made aboard the Icebird on the return journey from Antarctica. Maddock is associating herself, aboard the white ship Icebird, with the white-sailed explorers' ships which rounded the southern capes of Tasmania between 1642 until settlement in the Derwent River in 1803. The cords trailing across the four panels of the work reach back in time to represent both the tacking tracks of sailing ships and the rigging that cuts across the view from aboard ship. The four-panelled work is a topographical panorama of a south coast landscape as seen from out at sea. It is a reconstructed landscape which had once been the home of Aboriginal tribes for thousands of years. The title "Trouwerner..." is drawn from the Eastern Tribes' name for the island and both the text of 524 traditional place names and the columns of smoke signify pre-invasion tribal areas of Tasmania. AG5690 |
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108 Jennifer Marshall born 1944 'The Sea, The Sea' 1994 woodcut 108 x 188.8 Jennifer Marshall's twelve-block woodcut draws its immediate inspiration from Titian's The Submersion of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea. Marshall has adhered to Titian's basic landscape outline, yet has reversed it to fit into the view from the print workshop at the University of Tasmania's Centre for the Arts, her towers and spires representing Hobart rather than Egypt. In The Sea, The Sea, Marshall has retained Titian's transition of atmosphere and tidal movements, from the destructive turbulence of wind and water to the calm, gentle waves lapping on the shore, and transformed it into a powerful interpretation of Tasmanian sea and sky. There is a distinct shift between the calm undulating water below a light sky and the rough stormy seas over which billow dark, foreboding grey clouds. A similar tension exists between the two sides of the work: the natural untouched wilderness of the left and the city of factories and buildings on the right. If the great cloud moving over the sky in Titian's work represents the divine presence that has protected the Israelites, are the clouds in Marshall's work representative of more than atmospheric effects? AG5861 |
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109 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Studies of marine worm c1878 pencil and watercolour 13.7 x 16.6 (sight) Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG809 a |
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110 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Studies of marine worms (Serpulid) 1878 pencil and watercolour on wove paper 13.7 x 19 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG809 b |
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111 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Studies of marine worms (Tercoella) 1878 pencil and watercolour 13.8 x 19.1 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG809 c |
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112 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Studies of marine worm c1878 pen and ink and pencil and watercolour 13.4 x 18.7 (sight) Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG810 a |
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113 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Butterfly Gurnard (Lepidotrigla vanessa) 1884 pencil and watercolour 27.1 x 37.7 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these fish studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1331 |
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114 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Long snouted Boar Fish (Pentaceropsis recurirostris) pencil and watercolour 27.3 x 37.6 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these fish studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1332 |
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115 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Long-finned Pike (Dinolestes lewini) pencil, watercolour wash and chinese white highlights 27 x 37.7 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these fish studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1336 |
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116 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Real Trumpeter (Latris lineata) pencil, watercolour, chinese white highlights and gum 31.8 x 45 Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these fish studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1342 |
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117 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Studies of marine worms 1878 pencil and watercolour 13.8 x 19.1 (sight) Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1357 a |
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118 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 Study of marine worm 1879 pencil and watercolour 11.1 x 18.3 (sight) Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted these marine worm studies from specimens caught near her home on the East coast. AG1357 b |
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119 Louisa Anne Meredith (granddaughter of Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895) Tasmanian shells pencil, watercolour, chinese white and gum 14.3 x 17.6 Acquisition date unknown After her husband's death in 1880 and that of her son Charles in 1888 Louisa Anne Meredith moved to Hobart to be looked after by her capable granddaughter, also named Louisa Anne. This arrangement was to last for seven years until the younger woman married and moved to the mainland. During the time they lived together, Meredith taught her granddaughter watercolour painting; in June 1893, the grandmother's and granddaughter's work hung together in the Hobart Art Society Exhibition. The similarity of style to the elder Louisa Anne Meredith's work and the LAM monogram have led to these shell watercolours being attributed to the younger Louisa Anne. AG1494 |
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120 Louisa Anne Meredith (granddaughter of Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895) Tasmanian shells pencil, watercolour, chinese white and gum 13.9 x 18.6 Aquisition date unknown After her husband's death in 1880 and that of her son Charles in 1888 Louisa Anne Meredith moved to Hobart to be looked after by her capable granddaughter, also named Louisa Anne. This arrangement was to last for seven years until the younger woman married and moved to the mainland. During the time they lived together, Meredith taught her granddaughter watercolour painting; in June 1893, the grandmother's and granddaughter's work hung together in the Hobart Art Society Exhibition. The similarity of style to the elder Louisa Anne Meredith's work and the LAM monogram have led to these shell watercolours being attributed to the younger Louisa Anne. AG1495 |
121 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'The last sunset No1 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 42 x 62.5 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.1 | |
122 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'The Explosion No 2 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 45.8 x 63 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.2 | |
123 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'The Squall No 3 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 45.8 x 63 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.3 | |
124 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'Sucking the sail No 4 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 38.6 x 55.4 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.4 | |
125 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'The Fourth Day, when apparitions began to appear No 5 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 45 x 62.3 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.5 | |
126 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'Cactus Wine No 7 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 44.3 x 62.2 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.7 | |
127 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'No Despair No 6 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 44 x 61 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.6 | |
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128 Kevin Mortensen born 1939 'Landfall No 8 from the "Ingen Angst" (No Despair) Series' 1994 lithograph 44.3 x 61.5 In a suite of eight lithographs, Kevin Mortensen depicts an extraordinary narrative of survival and human endurance, in which the cardinal rule of the shipwrecked mariner is "don't despair". Mortensen's visual narrative is set early this century when a ship carrying a cargo of saltpetre caught fire and exploded soon after. One of the figures featured in the story is Johanes Mortensen, the artist's grandfather. At once naïvely straightforward and effectively Gothic, the series recalls the work of the English artist and novelist Mervyn Peake. AG5758.8 |
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129 Edward Murphy (1823-1871) Signals chart 1855 pen, pencil and watercolour Acquisition date unknown Edward Murphy came to Port Jackson as a guard on board a convict transport. He followed a career in deserting (at least four times) serving a prison sentence and eventually moving to Hobart Town with the 99th Regiment. It was here that Murphy put together elaborate pen, pencil and wash illustrations of ships, signal masts, semaphore flags and flags of the world. R1147 |
130 David Nash born 1955 'Exiles' 1978 oil on canvas 91 x 157.9 Tasmanian David Nash's source of inspiration is the landscape in which he lives; it is not surprising that depictions of the sea feature prominently in his work. Nash creates a parallel world to the natural world but makes no attempt to copy from it, rather carrying the visual image into the realm of the intellect and spirit. Exiles is an abstracted Tasmanian seascape. In this work, forms have been reduced to essential elements which carry their own dynamic quality, catching the eye and holding it as it moves across the surface. Nash's work is not literal interpretation, but recalled sensation. This picture works by association - what could the forms mean? A series of verticals seems to suggest the fluted classical columns of a foreground architecture, a dark, horizontal quadrilateral could be a ships hull, a mass of white which could be sea foam, snow or cloud, while below the central horizon line a small white mark evokes a lighthouse or marker buoy. AG5871 | |
131 Ian Parry born 1945 'Straits' 1994 oil on canvas 76 x 91 The sea, its observation and representation has held a long-term fascination for Ian Parry, which is evidenced by his dual career path as artist and as professional fisherman (he is certified as a master mariner class five). Parry often draws the subjects and systems of his rich, painterly compositions from his experience of mapping, navigation and the sea. Straits is painted from a sailor's viewpoint, its forms and colours abstracted from the particularities of countless Bass Strait journeys. AG5765 | |
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132 W C Piguenit 1836 - 1914 The Tower of Strength c1900 watercolour and gouache 35.7 x 56 Anonymous gift, 1971 Acknowledged as the first Australian-born professional landscape painter, Piguenit was a romantic realist who found his inspiration in the power and beauty of nature. He spent his life searching for grand natural visions, drawing his subjects from Tasmania, New South Wales and from two trips to Britain in 1898 and 1900. In The Tower of Strength Piguenit conveys not only the visual realities of tumultuous, crashing waves and a vast dramatic sky, but also the feelings of respect and awe that this scene evoked in him. Against the power and majesty of the ocean, The Tower of Strength (the lighthouse) is but a tiny speck on a barren headland dwarfed by the foam-crested, translucent green waves and the rugged, seaweed covered rocks onto which they break. The picture is a poet's delight but a navigator's nightmare. It brings to mind images of the dangerous seduction of the Sirens, whose sweet singing lured ships crews to their doom on jagged rocks. AG2447 |
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133 Thomas Rowlandson 1756 - 1827 A French proze towed into Bristol Harbour pen and ink and watercolour 15.1 x 19.6 Morton Allport Bequest, 1955 Thomas Rowlandson began his artistic career as a conventional history, landscape and portrait painter, but by about 1780 he had turned largely to caricature. Rowlandson is renowned for illustrating the novels of the great British satirists Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding, as well as drawing humorous sketches from everyday life: urban and rustic scenes, the aristocracy, the middle classes and the poor as well as seafaring life, ships and the sea. Although Rowlandson is commonly thought of as a satirist (most of his work is indeed gently humorous in its treatment), in some cases the satire is eased, and he presents a more objective record of life and times. A French prize towed into Bristol Harbour represents the towing into Bristol Harbour of a French ship captured in naval battle during the Napoleonic wars. AG336 |
134 Jan Senbergs born 1939 'The Voyage - from the series "Voyage Six - Antarctica 1987"' lithograph 80.5 x 120.8 In early 1987, Jan Senbergs voyaged across the stormy Southern Ocean and through hundreds of miles of pack ice to reach the continent of Antarctica. Senbergs was following in the footsteps of artists from history, such as Hodges (from Cook's second voyage) and Wilson (on Scott's fatal journey), who recorded their views of Antarctica as artists accompanying a scientific journey. The trip south is a long, sometimes treacherous passage and Senbergs has said that he associates Antarctica with the experience of the journey. On arrival, he was predominantly interested in man's presence rather than "pure" landscape. The Voyage is a dark, strongly constructed lithograph showing the human encroachment on what would have once been a vast, white landmass. Through the centre ploughs the ship carrying its zoologists, botanists, geologists and a myriad of other 'ists' (including in this case artists) and the accoutrements which accompany the progress of man and his industry into the landscape. Above soars an albatross. Sailors' superstition has it that an albatross hovering above a ship brings continued bad weather and that to be involved in killing this bird brings bad luck. Is Senbergs making a connection between human occupation of Antarctica and the tales of portentous doom which surround the image of the floating albatross? On the same journey fellow-artist Bea Maddock was severely injured in an accident, and unable even to leave the ship. AG5088.7 | |
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135 Owen Stanley 1811 - 1850 A man overboard off the north point of New Zealand (from the log of the "Britomart) 1840 watercolour 10.4 x 15.1 Royal Society of Tasmania Collection, 1965 Stanley was an avid sketcher who had a lifelong passion for the sea which was to see him travel the world by ship as a naval officer. Amongst the 154 pages of the album he made while captain of the Britomart (1837-1843) are comprehensive and personal observations of shipboard life, and depictions of the places to which he travelled. It is a ship's log in pictures and explanatory, informative text and shows Stanley's all-consuming interest in the sea, ships, voyages and sailors. The Royal Navy encouraged such embellishments to charts and ships' logs, with topographical accuracy and precise information being of the utmost importance. Although his sketching was considered by Stanley to be a hobby, he is recorded as having had lessons from the professional artist Conrad Martens in 1849. Unfortunately, they were not to be of much use to him; he died in Sydney aboard the Rattlesnake in early 1850. AG1936 |
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136 Owen Stanley 1811 - 1850 A man overboard (from the log of the "Britomart") 1840 watercolour 10.6 x 15.1 Royal Society of Tasmania Collection, 1965 Stanley was an avid sketcher who had a lifelong passion for the sea which was to see him travel the world by ship as a naval officer. Amongst the 154 pages of the album he made while captain of the Britomart (1837-1843) are comprehensive and personal observations of shipboard life, and depictions of the places to which he travelled. It is a ship's log in pictures and explanatory, informative text and shows Stanley's all-consuming interest in the sea, ships, voyages and sailors. The Royal Navy encouraged such embellishments to charts and ships' logs, with topographical accuracy and precise information being of the utmost importance. Although his sketching was considered by Stanley to be a hobby, he is recorded as having had lessons from the professional artist Conrad Martens in 1849. Unfortunately, they were not to be of much use to him; he died in Sydney aboard the Rattlesnake in early 1850. AG1937 |
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137 Molly Stephens 1920 - 1970 Noah c1967 oil on hardboard 212.3 x 80.8 Purchased, 1970 Having met her husband on the voyage out to Egypt to take up a teaching position, Molly Stephens was no stranger to travelling, moving from Egypt to Wales and England before sailing halfway around the world to finally settle in Tasmania. Here Stephens specialised in portrait commissions, and particularly enjoyed painting children. Noah is a portrait of her eighteen-year-old son Simon involved in the initial stages of building a boat in the backyard of the family home at Taroona. The title harks back to the character from the Bible, who because of his blameless piety was instructed by God to build an ark for the preservation of himself and his family from the flood caused by forty days and nights of non-stop rain. The ark was to serve Noah well with the onset of the flood, but before the rain came it was an object of derision and ridicule by people who jeered at Noah for building a boat on dry land. AG2467 |
138 Peter Stephenson born 1943 'Ship of State ' 1988 pastel and charcoal 75 x 107 One of Peter Stephenson's earliest memories is of the lighthouse at Port Hicks, Victoria, which was manned by his father before the family moved to Tasmania. Stephenson has done his time at sea, spending nine years (1961-1970) in service with the Royal Australian Navy, and many years as a deckie for abalone divers on the west coast of Tasmania. Having such a sea salt background, it is not surprising that the sea and ships should sometimes sneak into his subject matter. Despite its maritime focus, Ship of State is metaphor, as much as the exploration of aesthetic, psychological and political issues as it is a ship's portrait. It depicts a hulk arrested in a sea of murky darkness below a black and minimal horizon. It is a powerful image of impotence, claustrophobia and stasis. AG5546 | |
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139 Charles Taylor working 1841 to 1883 S.S. "City of Hobart" c1854 gouache 38.3 x 65.1 Purchased, 1935 Charles Taylor was an English painter of maritime scenes. Over forty-odd years (1841-1883), Taylor exhibited seventy-five paintings, mostly of ships, at various major London exhibitions. The City of Hobart was the first ship built for the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company. It departed Gravesend on 2 April, 1854 and arrived in Hobart on 9 July of the same year. This watercolour must have been painted before the City of Hobart left on her maiden voyage; Taylor never himself travelled to Australia. AG2382 |
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140 Kevin Todd born 1960 'Cartographies' 1992-93 laserfax on polyester film tiled into twenty-seven sheets 135 x 93 (each sheet) In his twenty-seven panelled work Cartographies, Kevin Todd plays with images derived from the sea. The scientific and imperial desire for cartographic knowledge is parodied as Todd's digitally-imaged aerial photographs stress the futility of seeking to know things for certain in the continuously moving ocean. There will never be a definitive map of the sea as waves, tidal movements and atmospheric effects change continually. Although science and technology may seek to understand the mechanics of the sea, it would seem that its mystery can only be alluded to through expressive rather than objective approach. These pages of laserfax on polyester film are mesmerising waterscapes which explore and challenge traditional notions of mapping and imaging and the measuring, conquest and naming of space. The work was made by sending the images by fax via satellite to an Antarctic science base, and having them returned, undermining traditional ideas of the authorship, transmission and reception of art and further complicating the work's rich net of conceptual associations. AG5815 |
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141 Artist unknown S.S. "Nubeena" c1900 oil on academy board 30.5 x 47.1 Gift of Mr N J Scott, 1950 Although the artist of this small painting remains unknown, the ship represented is not such a mystery. The Nubeena was built in the Bayes Brothers' Hobart shipyard in 1890. Its history was marked by calamity. In 1896 she met with her first mishap, colliding with the Alabama in D'Entrecasteaux Channel, yet her ultimate end arrived some years later when she ran aground and was wrecked in Frederick Henry Bay. AG1562 |
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142 Artist unknown Betsy Island, Mouth of the Derwent, Van Diemen's Land c1850 pencil on card 11.7 x 16.2 Gift of J H Smyly, 1974 AG2569 |
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143 Artist unknown working late 19th century The coastal ferry "Taranna" c1890 oil on card 30.5 x 48.2 Gift of Mr N J Scott, 1950 Although the artist of this small painting remains unknown, the ship represented is not such a mystery. The Taranna was named after the township on the Tasman Peninsula where it was constructed in 1884 by William Bayes. The Taranna, renowned for her speed, made daily trips up the Derwent River, and it was at New Norfolk that she met with disaster, catching ablaze and having to be scuttled in order to save her hull (scuttling required the cutting of holes through the bottom or sides of a ship for the purpose of sinking it). The hull of the Taranna was salvaged and returned to Hobart, where the ship was rebuilt and later exported to Sydney. AG5880 |
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144 Martin Walch born 1964 Isthmus Project (phase 1) 1992-93 aluminium, steel, composition board, glass, perspex, light globes, battery 14 x 62 x 35 Art Foundation of Tasmania, 1995 The stereoscopic photograph is a dynamic means for viewing photographs in three dimensions. Developed in the early days of photography it remained popular until the early twentieth century. It involves the use of a twin lens camera, where the lenses are displaced to simulate binocular vision (human eyesight). When viewed through special viewers the effect of three dimensional space is created. Martin Walch employs this technique to great effect in his Isthmus Project series, which features stereoscopic photographs of well-known landforms along the southern Tasmanian coastline. The Blowhole, Tasman Arch and Remarkable Cave are among some of the locations visited by the photographer. These vertiginous, claustrophobic, and Romantic locations are ideal sites to achieve the effect of the stereoscopic photograph and are regarded as extraordinary examples of the result on landforms of the weathering and erosion caused by the powerful and unforgiving action of the sea. AG5814 |
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145 James Abbott McNeil Whistler 1834 - 1903 Thames warehouses 1859 etching 7.6 x 20.2 Purchased, 1982 The son of a railway engineer, the American-born Whistler sailed for Paris and London at the age of twenty-one. In Paris he worked with Courbet and enjoyed the respect of Manet and Degas before moving to London, where he became a leading light of the Aesthetic Movement. In his paintings of London and the Thames, representation is secondary to "pure" form and mood, views being cropped and smudged into japoniste-impressionistic tonal hazes. These "notes, nocturnes and harmonies" challenged conservative artists and critics (most notably John Ruskin, who he took to court over a libellous review).Thames Warehouses is one of a set of sixteen etchings known as the Thames Set, which makes up a complete "character study" of the river. The Thames Set was inspired by the hustle and bustle of London's shipping and industry and demonstrates Whistler's instinct for line, both as a descriptive tool and as an independent, elastic mark. AG3386 |
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146 Fred Williams 1927 - 1982 The Kent Group, Bass Strait 1977 gouache 57 x 75 Gift of Mrs Lyn Williams, the artist's widow, 1994 Fred Williams' topographical views of the seascape of Bass Strait and its scattered islands were the subject of his last exhibition before his death. It was the barrier which Bass Strait presented between the island of Tasmania and the rest of Australia which fascinated Williams. Before he actually travelled to the islands, Williams would stand on the beach in various locations in Victoria looking out towards to sea and paint the strait from that perspective. In this work, Williams depicts the Kent Group in four hazy strips of gouache, one above the other. The horizontal strip format harks back to the topographical work of early coastline cartographers, while assisting Williams to find a solution to the representation of an uninterrupted seascape. The result is a landscape of continuous distance. AG5398 |
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147 Laurie Wilson 1920 - 1980 White Cloud and Sea 1975 photograph, cibachrome print 33.9 cm. x 27.2 cm. Purchased through the Blue Gum Festival of Tasmania, 1976 A photographic career which began in 1945, capturing the image of other people in his photographic studio, saw Laurie Wilson eventually sell the business and thereafter use photography to attempt to discover himself and his world. He simplified and intensified forms to try and capture the essence of things. White Cloud and Sea is a depiction of a transient moment. The black and white simplicity is evocative and dramatic: the dark, turbulent ocean with its breaking waves and spume is momentarily lit up by a solitary, white cloud hovering above. AG2780 |
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148 Louisa Anne Meredith 1812 - 1895 (Shell fish) pencil and watercolour Acquisition date unknown A prolific artist and writer, Louisa Anne Meredith had an exhaustingly inquiring mind; little escaped her notice. Before marrying her cousin and sailing for Sydney and then Van Diemen's Land, Meredith had published five books, had exhibited her paintings extensively and was acquainted with prominent literati including the poet Wordsworth. Despite the restrictions of the life of a pioneer wife and mother in isolated country Van Diemen's Land, she tried to write, draw or paint daily. She published a further fourteen books (many which she illustrated herself) and produced numerous sketches and finished watercolours which depict her perceptive observations of the natural world and life in the colonies. Meredith painted this shell fish study from a specimen found near her home on the East coast. AG810 b |
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