Lot Essay
The attribution to Wallis has been suggested by John McPhee on the basis of a photograph.
Two other unsigned paintings of c.1818 Inner View of Newcastle (see fig. 1) and View with Cattle in the foreground in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery are almost certainly by the same hand and have traditionally been given to Wallis. The Inner View at Newcastle relates to the engraving of Newcastle in Wallis' series of Views in New South Wales and both paintings returned to England and were included in his estate in 1859. A third painting Corroboree at Newcastle in the Dixson Gallery, Sydney has again traditionally been given to Wallis and similarly relates to an engraving in his Views.
The lack of any signed original works by Wallis led Bernard Smith to doubt Wallis as originator of the Views which bear his name and of the unsigned Corroboree at Newcastle and to suggest their attribution to Joseph Lycett who had been sent to Newcastle in 1815 as a secondary offender and who worked there as an architectural draughtsman on Wallis' building programme (see Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1985, pp. 236-237 and Bernard Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, A Study of Australian Art since 1788, 1988, pp. 283).
The attribution for the two oils at Newcastle followed suit, being given to Lycett by Joanna Coleman in Artemis on Smith's grounds that there had never been any evidence that Wallis had been a painter himself.
The case for Wallis returned in 1987 with the appearance at Christie's of a group of original sketches by Wallis including a signed watercolour Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains from Windsor dated 1815 which relates directly to an engraving in his Views (see Christie's South Kensington, Topographical Pictures, 28 May 1987, lot 219). These watercolours provided the first real evidence that Wallis had been a practising artist and the Hawkesbury watercolour would appear to reconfirm his status as originator of the Views. With the stumbling blocks encountered by Smith removed, Wallis is given partial credit (as collaborator with his convict charges) for the Views by Tim McCormick in 1987 (see Tim McCormick, First Views of Australia, 1788-1825, 1987, pp. 279).
In a letter to Christie's dated 10 April 1991 John McPhee states that the present painting is 'most probably - certainly? - by the same artist as the two paintings in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery. They have been attributed to Joseph Lycett, but more recently, and more appropriately, to James Wallis. The recent appearance on the market of a series of watercolour sketches by Wallis [see above] have established his style and oeuvre, and so this re-attribution can be made with reasonable accuracy'.
The present painting shows Newcastle in 1817-18. Newcastle was established as a penal settlement under military control in 1804, the first penal outstation on the mainland, situated where the Hunter River flows into the Pacific about 70 miles north of Sydney. .
Wallis, who had arrived in Sydney with his detachment of the 46th Regiment in 1814, was appointed Commandant at Newcastle in 1816.
He left Newcastle at the end of 1818 and Governor Macquarie's report on his achievements at the settlement was published in the Sidney Gazette on 26 December 1818: 'The humane and judicious system adopted by this officer towards the large population of convicts at Newcastle, (now amounting to nearly 700 persons) entitles him to His EXCELLENCY'S warmest commendation, considering in what degree the condition of those unfortunate persons has been ameliorated and improved since he took command of the settlement. His EXCELLENCY feels it equally a tribute due to that officer's merits to notice with suitable commendation the grand scale of improvements by which he has advanced the settlement of Newcastle, from the appearance of an humble Hamlet, to the rank and capabilities of a well laid out, regular, and clean Town...'.
Unofficially, the reality of life at Newcastle in 1818 was grim and would become worse under the punitive rule of Major James Morisset who succeeded Wallis as Commandant: 'Life at Newcastle was hard, and successive commandants were ordered to keep it so. It was a dirty infant of a town, consisting of parallel rows of convict-built slab huts and barracks holding some 250 men considered dangerous. They slept in cribs a little more than four feet wide, three men to a crib ... In summer this shanty town was oppressively hot; the thermometer rising to 105 in the shade, with burning northerlies sometimes pushing it to 115. Everything in Newcastle seemed either exhausting or boring, but that was what commended it to the authorities .... There were sandflies, mosquitoes, cholera, dysentery, catarrh and, as an extra irritation, a large perambulating sand dune - unwisely stripped of
scrub so that escaping convicts could not hide in it - which kept
creeping into the town and had to be shovelled back .... The main
preoccupation among the Newcastle prisoners was escape. To discourage
it, the Commandants made their officers treat the local aborigines
well, cajoling them with small gifts or tabacco and sugar or, for
exceptional services, blankets. In this way Bigge noted, the Aborigines had become "very active" in recapturing prisoners: 'Notwithstanding the apprehension of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neighbourhood, but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of the convicts'. Thus the black police tracker made his first appearance in Australia; and one more grudge was added to the growing hatred of convict white for tribal black. (Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 1987, 12, Metastasis, ii, pp. 434-436).
In Wallis' View of Newcastle a group of aborigines are included on the bluff of Nobby's above the ocean and others stand alongside the soldiers on the pier in the bay. In an album of his sketches Wallis recorded his own friendly relations with Burigon (Jack), the Chieftain of the Newcastle tribe and his brother Dick alongside their portraits: 'I can now tho' so many years have passed over me, call the scene to memory ... twas near the close of one of those delightful days almost peculiar to New South Wales. ... There are scenes in all our lives to which we turn back to with pleasurable tho' perhaps with a tinge of melancholy feelings and I now remember poor Jack the black savage ministering to my pleasures, fishing, kangaroo hunting, guiding me thro' trackless forests with more kindly feelings than I do many of my own colour, kindred and nation - ... Dick was a shrewd active fellow but wilder and more untamed than Burigon, he appeared drowsy and fatigued as I copied his face, faithfully tho' without art'. (Unpublished manuscript in an album of sketches by Wallis sold at Christie's South Kensington Topographical Pictures, 25 May 1989, lot 161)
The present painting is an important addition to Wallis' meagre surviving Australian work which, returning the three oils at Newcastle and Sydney to Wallis from Lycett, now consists of just four unsigned oil paintings, one signed watercolour (these all mentioned above) and one unsigned pencil drawing Reid's Mistake near Newcastle, New South Wales (see Sotheby's, London, Topographical Paintings, 4 November 1987, lot 112) taken from the same album as the Christie's Hawkesbury watercolour. Assuming all the engravings in Wallis' Views are taken from his original drawings (the Sotheby's drawing relates to one of the three engravings in the set of twelve which do not bear his name) missing works include ten drawings for the Views and the portrait sketches of Burigon and Jack mentioned by Wallis (but not included) in the Christie's album. The two oils at Newcastle are numbered 4 and 6 respectively on old labels on the reverse which suggests a series of views, of which the present painting and the Corroboree at Newcastle may be part.
Wallis may now be returned to the status accorded him by Max and Thea Rienits in 1963: 'The arrival in Sydney of Captain James Wallis, of the 46th Regiment, may be regarded as the beginning of a new phase in the story of Australians' early art. The first delineators of the Australian scene had been the artists, professional or otherwise, who had sailed on the various voyages of exploration. Then had come the naval draughtsmen of the First Fleet, and after them the convict artists;(...)Wallis was the first of what was to become a fairly steady flow of military officers whose off-duty talents ran to drawing ... . In addition to being the first, Wallis was perhaps artistically the most important' (Max and Thea Rienits, Early Artists of Australia, 1963, pp. 189).
We are grateful to John McPhee and David Bradshaw for their help in preparing this catalogue entry
Two other unsigned paintings of c.1818 Inner View of Newcastle (see fig. 1) and View with Cattle in the foreground in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery are almost certainly by the same hand and have traditionally been given to Wallis. The Inner View at Newcastle relates to the engraving of Newcastle in Wallis' series of Views in New South Wales and both paintings returned to England and were included in his estate in 1859. A third painting Corroboree at Newcastle in the Dixson Gallery, Sydney has again traditionally been given to Wallis and similarly relates to an engraving in his Views.
The lack of any signed original works by Wallis led Bernard Smith to doubt Wallis as originator of the Views which bear his name and of the unsigned Corroboree at Newcastle and to suggest their attribution to Joseph Lycett who had been sent to Newcastle in 1815 as a secondary offender and who worked there as an architectural draughtsman on Wallis' building programme (see Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1985, pp. 236-237 and Bernard Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, A Study of Australian Art since 1788, 1988, pp. 283).
The attribution for the two oils at Newcastle followed suit, being given to Lycett by Joanna Coleman in Artemis on Smith's grounds that there had never been any evidence that Wallis had been a painter himself.
The case for Wallis returned in 1987 with the appearance at Christie's of a group of original sketches by Wallis including a signed watercolour Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains from Windsor dated 1815 which relates directly to an engraving in his Views (see Christie's South Kensington, Topographical Pictures, 28 May 1987, lot 219). These watercolours provided the first real evidence that Wallis had been a practising artist and the Hawkesbury watercolour would appear to reconfirm his status as originator of the Views. With the stumbling blocks encountered by Smith removed, Wallis is given partial credit (as collaborator with his convict charges) for the Views by Tim McCormick in 1987 (see Tim McCormick, First Views of Australia, 1788-1825, 1987, pp. 279).
In a letter to Christie's dated 10 April 1991 John McPhee states that the present painting is 'most probably - certainly? - by the same artist as the two paintings in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery. They have been attributed to Joseph Lycett, but more recently, and more appropriately, to James Wallis. The recent appearance on the market of a series of watercolour sketches by Wallis [see above] have established his style and oeuvre, and so this re-attribution can be made with reasonable accuracy'.
The present painting shows Newcastle in 1817-18. Newcastle was established as a penal settlement under military control in 1804, the first penal outstation on the mainland, situated where the Hunter River flows into the Pacific about 70 miles north of Sydney. .
Wallis, who had arrived in Sydney with his detachment of the 46th Regiment in 1814, was appointed Commandant at Newcastle in 1816.
He left Newcastle at the end of 1818 and Governor Macquarie's report on his achievements at the settlement was published in the Sidney Gazette on 26 December 1818: 'The humane and judicious system adopted by this officer towards the large population of convicts at Newcastle, (now amounting to nearly 700 persons) entitles him to His EXCELLENCY'S warmest commendation, considering in what degree the condition of those unfortunate persons has been ameliorated and improved since he took command of the settlement. His EXCELLENCY feels it equally a tribute due to that officer's merits to notice with suitable commendation the grand scale of improvements by which he has advanced the settlement of Newcastle, from the appearance of an humble Hamlet, to the rank and capabilities of a well laid out, regular, and clean Town...'.
Unofficially, the reality of life at Newcastle in 1818 was grim and would become worse under the punitive rule of Major James Morisset who succeeded Wallis as Commandant: 'Life at Newcastle was hard, and successive commandants were ordered to keep it so. It was a dirty infant of a town, consisting of parallel rows of convict-built slab huts and barracks holding some 250 men considered dangerous. They slept in cribs a little more than four feet wide, three men to a crib ... In summer this shanty town was oppressively hot; the thermometer rising to 105 in the shade, with burning northerlies sometimes pushing it to 115. Everything in Newcastle seemed either exhausting or boring, but that was what commended it to the authorities .... There were sandflies, mosquitoes, cholera, dysentery, catarrh and, as an extra irritation, a large perambulating sand dune - unwisely stripped of
scrub so that escaping convicts could not hide in it - which kept
creeping into the town and had to be shovelled back .... The main
preoccupation among the Newcastle prisoners was escape. To discourage
it, the Commandants made their officers treat the local aborigines
well, cajoling them with small gifts or tabacco and sugar or, for
exceptional services, blankets. In this way Bigge noted, the Aborigines had become "very active" in recapturing prisoners: 'Notwithstanding the apprehension of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neighbourhood, but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of the convicts'. Thus the black police tracker made his first appearance in Australia; and one more grudge was added to the growing hatred of convict white for tribal black. (Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 1987, 12, Metastasis, ii, pp. 434-436).
In Wallis' View of Newcastle a group of aborigines are included on the bluff of Nobby's above the ocean and others stand alongside the soldiers on the pier in the bay. In an album of his sketches Wallis recorded his own friendly relations with Burigon (Jack), the Chieftain of the Newcastle tribe and his brother Dick alongside their portraits: 'I can now tho' so many years have passed over me, call the scene to memory ... twas near the close of one of those delightful days almost peculiar to New South Wales. ... There are scenes in all our lives to which we turn back to with pleasurable tho' perhaps with a tinge of melancholy feelings and I now remember poor Jack the black savage ministering to my pleasures, fishing, kangaroo hunting, guiding me thro' trackless forests with more kindly feelings than I do many of my own colour, kindred and nation - ... Dick was a shrewd active fellow but wilder and more untamed than Burigon, he appeared drowsy and fatigued as I copied his face, faithfully tho' without art'. (Unpublished manuscript in an album of sketches by Wallis sold at Christie's South Kensington Topographical Pictures, 25 May 1989, lot 161)
The present painting is an important addition to Wallis' meagre surviving Australian work which, returning the three oils at Newcastle and Sydney to Wallis from Lycett, now consists of just four unsigned oil paintings, one signed watercolour (these all mentioned above) and one unsigned pencil drawing Reid's Mistake near Newcastle, New South Wales (see Sotheby's, London, Topographical Paintings, 4 November 1987, lot 112) taken from the same album as the Christie's Hawkesbury watercolour. Assuming all the engravings in Wallis' Views are taken from his original drawings (the Sotheby's drawing relates to one of the three engravings in the set of twelve which do not bear his name) missing works include ten drawings for the Views and the portrait sketches of Burigon and Jack mentioned by Wallis (but not included) in the Christie's album. The two oils at Newcastle are numbered 4 and 6 respectively on old labels on the reverse which suggests a series of views, of which the present painting and the Corroboree at Newcastle may be part.
Wallis may now be returned to the status accorded him by Max and Thea Rienits in 1963: 'The arrival in Sydney of Captain James Wallis, of the 46th Regiment, may be regarded as the beginning of a new phase in the story of Australians' early art. The first delineators of the Australian scene had been the artists, professional or otherwise, who had sailed on the various voyages of exploration. Then had come the naval draughtsmen of the First Fleet, and after them the convict artists;(...)Wallis was the first of what was to become a fairly steady flow of military officers whose off-duty talents ran to drawing ... . In addition to being the first, Wallis was perhaps artistically the most important' (Max and Thea Rienits, Early Artists of Australia, 1963, pp. 189).
We are grateful to John McPhee and David Bradshaw for their help in preparing this catalogue entry