#MB54
Ca. 1870
Four Oblong Folio album leaves. With five mounted watercolours each ca. 16x29 cm (6 ½ x 11 ½ in) or slightly smaller, four with period pencil captions on mounts. Mounts with a couple of minor marginal tears, but otherwise a very good collection.
An attractive collection of lively watercolours of colonial Australia and Tasmania. Two views, captioned “Lake Midgeon, Wagga Wagga” and “Same,” most likely depict the banks of the Murrumbidgee River and Wollundry Lagoon in the centre of Wagga Wagga town (Riverina region of New South Wales). The wooden pedestrian bridge on one of the drawings looks similar to the one, built over the Wollundry Lagoon in 1874 by a local architect Charles Redman, and replaced in 1920 and then again in 1962 (see more). The homestead on the left possibly stands on the site of modern-day Victory Memorial Gardens in Wagga Wagga. The other possibility is that the watercolours show Lake Mejum (now Mejum Swamp) northeast of Narrandera (Riverina region, 95 km northwest of Wagga Wagga). The watercolour view of the famous Botany Bay in Sydney features a steamship moored at a pier. The drawing of the Tamar River in Tasmania (actually, the estuary of the North Esk and South Esk Rivers, flowing into the Bass Strait near George Town) shows a steam and sail ships meeting at the estuary’s bend, with distant hills in the background. Overall a nice collection of early original watercolours of Australia and Tasmania.
A list of pencil captions: Botany Bay; Lake Midgeon, Wagga Wagga; Same; Tamar River, Tasmania.
