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29
GEORGE BAXTER (ATTRIBUTED) AFTER H.S. MELVILLE
News From Home
oil on canvas
inscribed verso: G. Baxter 1852
62.5 x 80.5cm
PROVENANCE
letter of provenance verso by Brett Harrild, descendant of Mary Harrild, George Baxter's wife
OTHER NOTES
The experience of the emigrant in Australia's colonial history has been the subject of surprisingly few painterly images. The most famous, arguably, is Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England 1825 (Collection: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) which was inspired by the scene Brown witnessed at the docks when farewelling his artist companion, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, as he departed by ship to Australia. For local audiences, the best-known image is Tom Robert's Coming South 1886 (Collection: National Gallery of Victoria), a post-gold rush painting of migrants, based on sketches made during Roberts' return to Australia from London aboard the SS Lusitania the previous year.
Sitting directly between these two views of actual emigration is Harden Sidney Melville's The Squatter's Hut: News from Home, 1850-51 (Collection: National Gallery of Australia), an expression of the flipside, that of the pioneer's lived experience in a new land. Shortly after its exhibition in London in 1851(1) the famed printmaker George Baxter entered into an agreement with Melville to reproduce the painting using his patented ‘Baxter Print' technique. Released in early 1853 under the revised title of Australia. News from home, this proved to be a commercially successful decision, for many thousands of the relatively inexpensive print were subsequently purchased to hang in family homes as a tangible reminder of close relatives now domiciled at the other end of the world. In preparation for the transfer of the design, Baxter painted this version in oil, which stayed in the possession of his descendants for more than 150 years.
By the age of twenty, Baxter was already illustrating books produced by his father, who was also a printer. He then studied wood engraving in London before setting up his own business in 1827 and being granted Patent No. 6916 – Improvements in Producing Coloured Steel Plate, Copper Plate and other Impressions in 1835.(2) Baxter's prints demonstrated an incredible fidelity to the original and utilised mezzotint plates, single colour wood blocks (up to twenty per print, though 12 were utilised for the copy of Melville's painting) and a hot-roller finish.(3) By 1853, when Baxter's version appeared, gold had been discovered in both Victoria and New South Wales leading to the retitling as Australia. News from home. Its popularity saw the image used in other publishing ventures, such as an illustration for sheet music.(4) Following his bankruptcy in 1865, the company Vincent Brooks and Co. bought many of the original plates and continued producing selected prints including Australia. News from home. Sadly, Baxter died two years later following an accident whilst mounting an omnibus, an ignominious end for a man who ‘had known fame and glory, had been received by kings and princes, and his work had been admired by the highest in the land, but … he died a lonely, embittered and disappointed man.'(5)
Melville's original image was the result of his travels around Australia between 1837 and 1841 whilst occupying the position of draughtsman on board HMS Fly, which was undertaking the first official hydrographic survey of the northeast coast of Australia. The Squatter's hut: news from Home was actually painted in England, and although the architectural form of the rough timber dwelling has been ‘romanticised' with a gothic arch, ‘the interior and its contents are considered historically accurate.'(6) At its centre, a young bearded squatter excitedly reads a letter from ‘home' (ie Britain) as his companion lounges in an adjoining armchair reading a recent copy of the London Illustrated News promoting the design of the Crystal Palace for the following year's Great Exhibition of 1851.(7) A third man with a freshly lit pipe stands next to the door, opposite the two Aboriginal men who have delivered the articles, one of whom displays the coin he has been given for his services. Although the introduction of the penny post in Britain in 1840 ‘caused a revolution' in people's lives particularly in ‘far-flung colonies such as Australia,'(8) home delivery in this country ‘did not exist [in 1850] and lists of mail ready for the collection were placed on billboards outside the post office or printed in local newspapers;'(9) hence the enterprise of the two Indigenous men. The costume of this duo is not as outlandish as it appears, with the feathers in the hair, for example, being ‘similar to those worn by two Aborigines in Melville's drawing "Bush Scene Swan River" from his Sketches in Australia and the Adjacent Islands (1849);'(10) and the clay pipe supported by the man's nasal piercing was also not an uncommon practice. In the second half of 1845 (during an extended stay in Sydney), Melville went ‘up country' for six weeks.(11) During this period he travelled through the Camden and Goulbourn regions and spent a night in a shingle-roofed log hut as the guest of a pioneer couple.(12) The central character may even be an idealized self-portrait as Melville noted that when he went ‘up country', he ‘dressed ‘à la squatter – tweed-shooting jacket and trousers, cabbage-tree hat, a belt and kangaroo-skin boots, a canary waistcoat or two in (his) valise.'(13)
In the execution of his prints, George Baxter was a fine copyist and would often embellish his version after the original. In this regard, there are noticeable stylistic differences between Melville's painting and Baxter's. Key alterations include the colour of the squatter's coat (from Melville's green to Baxter's red-brown), the removal of blood from the kangaroo carcasses in the foreground, the changed colours of the deerhounds, and the absence of the scene beyond the hut's opening, which originally featured three dead tree trunks, a squall of cockatoos, and a red-shirted horseman rounding up a mob of sheep. That said, it remains a fascinating image, a direct link to the potency of Baxter's prints amongst the general British public. It is also a rare, capably painted example of the emigrant experience in Australia, one of the defining aspects of this nation's character.
© Andrew Gaynor 2019
Footnotes:
1 Twenty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists, London, opened 22 March 1851, cat.336
2 Biographical details from: ‘George Baxter (printer)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Baxter_(printer) Accessed 10 May 2019
3 It has been estimated that Baxter printed over twenty million prints during his career. See: Max E. Mitzman, George Baxter and the Baxter Prints, Newton Abbot, London, 1978, p.50 4 H. S. Melville, ibid., p.225 5 Max E. Mitzman, ibid., p.62 6 Patricia Tryon Macdonald, ‘Harden Sidney Melville', Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.110 7 Tim Bonyhady notes that no such copy of the London Illustrated News was ever published. See: Bonyhady, p.145
8 Christopher Wood, ‘From a Distant Land: news from abroad' in: Patricia Tryon Macdonald (ed.), Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.104 9 Elizabeth Gertsakis, ‘From a Distant Land: news from home', in: Patricia Tryon Macdonald (ed.), Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.106 10 Tim Bonyhady, op cit., p.146
11 H. S. Melville, ‘A six weeks' cruise "up country" in New South Wales,' A Boy's Travels round the World or the Adventures of a Griffin etc., Bell and Daldy, London, 1871, pp.225-246
12 H. S. Melville, ibid., pp.238-239
13 H. S. Melville, quoted in: Tim Bonyhady, op cit., p.147, fn.14
inscribed verso: G. Baxter 1852
62.5 x 80.5cm
PROVENANCE
letter of provenance verso by Brett Harrild, descendant of Mary Harrild, George Baxter's wife
OTHER NOTES
The experience of the emigrant in Australia's colonial history has been the subject of surprisingly few painterly images. The most famous, arguably, is Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England 1825 (Collection: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) which was inspired by the scene Brown witnessed at the docks when farewelling his artist companion, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, as he departed by ship to Australia. For local audiences, the best-known image is Tom Robert's Coming South 1886 (Collection: National Gallery of Victoria), a post-gold rush painting of migrants, based on sketches made during Roberts' return to Australia from London aboard the SS Lusitania the previous year.
Sitting directly between these two views of actual emigration is Harden Sidney Melville's The Squatter's Hut: News from Home, 1850-51 (Collection: National Gallery of Australia), an expression of the flipside, that of the pioneer's lived experience in a new land. Shortly after its exhibition in London in 1851(1) the famed printmaker George Baxter entered into an agreement with Melville to reproduce the painting using his patented ‘Baxter Print' technique. Released in early 1853 under the revised title of Australia. News from home, this proved to be a commercially successful decision, for many thousands of the relatively inexpensive print were subsequently purchased to hang in family homes as a tangible reminder of close relatives now domiciled at the other end of the world. In preparation for the transfer of the design, Baxter painted this version in oil, which stayed in the possession of his descendants for more than 150 years.
By the age of twenty, Baxter was already illustrating books produced by his father, who was also a printer. He then studied wood engraving in London before setting up his own business in 1827 and being granted Patent No. 6916 – Improvements in Producing Coloured Steel Plate, Copper Plate and other Impressions in 1835.(2) Baxter's prints demonstrated an incredible fidelity to the original and utilised mezzotint plates, single colour wood blocks (up to twenty per print, though 12 were utilised for the copy of Melville's painting) and a hot-roller finish.(3) By 1853, when Baxter's version appeared, gold had been discovered in both Victoria and New South Wales leading to the retitling as Australia. News from home. Its popularity saw the image used in other publishing ventures, such as an illustration for sheet music.(4) Following his bankruptcy in 1865, the company Vincent Brooks and Co. bought many of the original plates and continued producing selected prints including Australia. News from home. Sadly, Baxter died two years later following an accident whilst mounting an omnibus, an ignominious end for a man who ‘had known fame and glory, had been received by kings and princes, and his work had been admired by the highest in the land, but … he died a lonely, embittered and disappointed man.'(5)
Melville's original image was the result of his travels around Australia between 1837 and 1841 whilst occupying the position of draughtsman on board HMS Fly, which was undertaking the first official hydrographic survey of the northeast coast of Australia. The Squatter's hut: news from Home was actually painted in England, and although the architectural form of the rough timber dwelling has been ‘romanticised' with a gothic arch, ‘the interior and its contents are considered historically accurate.'(6) At its centre, a young bearded squatter excitedly reads a letter from ‘home' (ie Britain) as his companion lounges in an adjoining armchair reading a recent copy of the London Illustrated News promoting the design of the Crystal Palace for the following year's Great Exhibition of 1851.(7) A third man with a freshly lit pipe stands next to the door, opposite the two Aboriginal men who have delivered the articles, one of whom displays the coin he has been given for his services. Although the introduction of the penny post in Britain in 1840 ‘caused a revolution' in people's lives particularly in ‘far-flung colonies such as Australia,'(8) home delivery in this country ‘did not exist [in 1850] and lists of mail ready for the collection were placed on billboards outside the post office or printed in local newspapers;'(9) hence the enterprise of the two Indigenous men. The costume of this duo is not as outlandish as it appears, with the feathers in the hair, for example, being ‘similar to those worn by two Aborigines in Melville's drawing "Bush Scene Swan River" from his Sketches in Australia and the Adjacent Islands (1849);'(10) and the clay pipe supported by the man's nasal piercing was also not an uncommon practice. In the second half of 1845 (during an extended stay in Sydney), Melville went ‘up country' for six weeks.(11) During this period he travelled through the Camden and Goulbourn regions and spent a night in a shingle-roofed log hut as the guest of a pioneer couple.(12) The central character may even be an idealized self-portrait as Melville noted that when he went ‘up country', he ‘dressed ‘à la squatter – tweed-shooting jacket and trousers, cabbage-tree hat, a belt and kangaroo-skin boots, a canary waistcoat or two in (his) valise.'(13)
In the execution of his prints, George Baxter was a fine copyist and would often embellish his version after the original. In this regard, there are noticeable stylistic differences between Melville's painting and Baxter's. Key alterations include the colour of the squatter's coat (from Melville's green to Baxter's red-brown), the removal of blood from the kangaroo carcasses in the foreground, the changed colours of the deerhounds, and the absence of the scene beyond the hut's opening, which originally featured three dead tree trunks, a squall of cockatoos, and a red-shirted horseman rounding up a mob of sheep. That said, it remains a fascinating image, a direct link to the potency of Baxter's prints amongst the general British public. It is also a rare, capably painted example of the emigrant experience in Australia, one of the defining aspects of this nation's character.
© Andrew Gaynor 2019
Footnotes:
1 Twenty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists, London, opened 22 March 1851, cat.336
2 Biographical details from: ‘George Baxter (printer)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Baxter_(printer) Accessed 10 May 2019
3 It has been estimated that Baxter printed over twenty million prints during his career. See: Max E. Mitzman, George Baxter and the Baxter Prints, Newton Abbot, London, 1978, p.50 4 H. S. Melville, ibid., p.225 5 Max E. Mitzman, ibid., p.62 6 Patricia Tryon Macdonald, ‘Harden Sidney Melville', Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.110 7 Tim Bonyhady notes that no such copy of the London Illustrated News was ever published. See: Bonyhady, p.145
8 Christopher Wood, ‘From a Distant Land: news from abroad' in: Patricia Tryon Macdonald (ed.), Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.104 9 Elizabeth Gertsakis, ‘From a Distant Land: news from home', in: Patricia Tryon Macdonald (ed.), Exiles and Emigrants: epic journeys to Australia in the Victorian Era, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p.106 10 Tim Bonyhady, op cit., p.146
11 H. S. Melville, ‘A six weeks' cruise "up country" in New South Wales,' A Boy's Travels round the World or the Adventures of a Griffin etc., Bell and Daldy, London, 1871, pp.225-246
12 H. S. Melville, ibid., pp.238-239
13 H. S. Melville, quoted in: Tim Bonyhady, op cit., p.147, fn.14
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