Notes
- Martin Heidegger, ‘Building dwelling thinking’, Basic Writings, David Krell (ed.), London: Routledge, 1994, p.348.
- ibid, pp.350–51.
- While the artists may not have intended showing themselves out of place, it certainly conforms to an understandable anxiety at being in such a strange unknown place with boatloads of convicts so far from home.
- Heidegger, ‘Building…, pp.356–57.
- ibid, pp.360–61.
- Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1757.
- William Gilpin, Three essays: On picturesque beauty, On picturesque travel, and On sketching landscape; to which is added a poem, On landscape painting by William Gilpin, London: R. Blamire, 1792.
- For a discussion of these differences within the picturesque, see Stephen Daniels, Humphrey Repton Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pp.103–47.
- See Heidegger, ‘Builidng…’, pp.350–51.
- Johannes Fabian, ‘Remembering the Other’, Critical Inquiry, vol.26, no.1, Autumn 1999, pp.54–55.
- Catherine Nash, ‘Breaking new ground’, Tate, no.21, 2000, p.64.
- ibid.
- See Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 (second edition), chapter 1.
- Harold Osbourne (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p.1146.
- See, for example, Smith, European Vision…
- Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘Discourse XIII’, Discourses on Art, Robert R. Wark (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, p.238.
- Kenneth Clark, Landscape Into Art, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956, p.31.
- Osbourne, The Oxford Companion…, pp.1146–47.
- Edward Dayes, The Works of the Late Edward Dayes, E.W. Brayley (ed.), London, 1805, p.213.
- ibid, p.203.
- All quotes from Watling are from the reprint of a pamphlet issued by George Mackaness in his Australian Monograph series in 1945: Letters from an Exile at Botany-Bay to his Aunt in Dumfries, Dubbo: Review Publications Pty Ltd, 1979. The original twenty- eight-page pamphlet, printed in Penrith by Ann Bell in 1794, is held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
- Captain Watkin Tench, A complete account of the settlement at Port Jackson’, Sydney's First Four Years, Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1979, p.260.
- ibid, p.276.
- For the Port Jackson Painter's association with the circle of naval draughtsmen, see Smith, European Vision, pp.159–63; and Smith and Wheeler, The Art of the First Fleet…, pp.213–14, 220–24.
- However the naval draughtsmen emulate the neo-classical lines of the then fashionable but soon to be outmoded picturesque conventions of Capability Brown, rather than the more romantic approaches to the picturesque being advocated by Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price in the 1790s.
- Smith, European Vision…, pp.179–80.
- ibid.
- Most clearly evident in A Native Wounded while asleep (Watling 52).
- Smith, European Vision…, p.187.
- Dayes, The Works…, p.225.
- ibid, pp.192–93.
- ibid, p.199.
- David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol.2, London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1802, p.209.
- It is widely presumed that these figures are based on sketches by Watling (see Smith, European Vision…, p.187).
- Dayes, The Works…, p.199.
- ibid, p.202.
- See McCormick, First Views…, p.68.
- ibid, p. 273.
- Dayes, The Works…, p.225.
- ibid, p. 192.
- Marc Augé, A Sense of the Other: The Timeliness and Relevance of Anthropology, Amy Jacobs (trans.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p.82, quoted in Fabian, ‘Remembering the Other’, pp.52–53.
- Fabian, ‘Remembering the Other’, pp.52–53.
- Nicholas Thomas, Possessions Indigenous Art / Colonial Cultures, London: Thames and Hudson, 1999, p.38.
- Paula Dredge and Steward Laidler, ‘Comparative examination and pigment analysis of four oil paintings attributed to Thomas Watling’, in Sue-Anne Wallace, Jacqueline Macnaughton and Jodi Parvey (eds), The Articulate Surface, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1996, pp.211–12.
- ibid, pp.203–12. See also Elizabeth Ellis, ‘Provenance and dating—curatorial evidence’, in Wallace et al, The Articulate Surface, pp.189–201.
- See Bernard Smith, ‘The oil painting “Sydney in 1794”’, Australian Journal of Art, vol. XIV, no.1, 1998, pp.52–59. Smith did previously believe the painting was probably done in England in the early nineteenth century (see Smith, “The artwork’, in Smith and Wheeler, The Art of the First Fleet, pp.235–36). For related commentary see, Jane Lennon, ‘Second thoughts on first views: the Port Jackson circle, 1788–1800’, Australian Journal of Art, vol.XIV, no.1, 1998, pp.31–51.
- Smith, ‘The oil painting “Sydney in 1794”’, pp.55–56.
- Ellis, ‘Provenance and dating…’, p.195.
- Smith, ‘The oil painting “Sydney in 1794”’, p.54.
- For reproductions of these texts, see McCormick, First Views…, p.270; and Smith, ‘The oil painting “Sydney in 1794”’, p.54.
- McCormick noted the discrepancy between the title and the view, but put this down to inconsistencies in Watling's titles (see McCormick, First Views…, p.274 and p.33). However Watling is always accurate. He describes the view from his perspective, rather than from the perspective of what he is looking at. That is, a direct north view is one taken from a northerly position looking south. In one drawing, he describes the view as being taken from the west side, and another facing to the north-west. Collins, on the other hand, describes the view from the perspective of what is seen. Interestingly, in his book a view from the west side, which is virtually identical to that of the oil painting in question, is described as a direct south view of the Town of Sydney. This description occurs under the drawing by Dayes. Whoever wrote the inscription on the back of the oil painting could have been familiar with these different conventions used by Watling and Collins, and accepted that what Collins called a direct south view, Watling would have called a direct north view. These shifts in conventions have resulted in the oil painting being wrongly described as a direct north view.
- Dayes's drawings are copied from Watling, and so like them generally depict a strangely deserted settlement. However sometimes figures are added, as in the bullock team and other figures in Brickfield Hill and Village on the High Road to Parramatta. Because we don't have the original Watling drawings, it is not known if this is in fact an addition. If Watling had in fact painted the bullock team, it would have been unusual given his surviving drawings. If we compare Watling's View of Sydney (1795–6) with two related versions by Dayes, Dayes has in each case added several Europeans. The Watling drawing depicts no Europeans, and a group of three Aborigines—omitted by Dayes in one drawing, and included in the other (as discussed previously). Fernando Brambila and Juan Ravenet, two skilled contemporary artists who visited the colony while Watling was there, also show a prosperous colony teeming with Europeans.
- Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to study actual oil paintings by Dayes or this particular oil painting of Sydney Cove. I cannot even determine from the best reproductions how idealised the Aboriginal figures in the painting are.
- From the explanatory description (reproduced in McCormick, First Views…, p.88) that accompanied the aquatint made from Dayes's drawing of the colony published in 1804 by Dukes.