Mercado Libertad (San Juan de Dios)

Picturesque views reached their most extravagant form during the early nineteenth- century in the production of multiple views or panoramas. Perhaps the best known of these in Australia is by Major James Taylor (1785-1829). Panoramic Views of Port Jackson (see fig. 55) is an early example of a template repeated by other artists across

the colonies. And like the single picturesque views discussed above, this was a template with a ready place for Aborigines.

Several panoramas of Hobart Town were produced in the early nineteenth-century, including known versions by Evans, Lycett, Francis Guillemard Simpkinson de Wesselow (1819-1906) and Benjamin Duterrau.

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Figure 55 - James Taylor, Panoramic Views of Port Jackson, c. 1821, engraving, State Library of New South Wales (series arranged clockwise from top left, with right hand view enlarged to show Aborigines).

Yet, none of these works include Aborigines. This is especially curious in the case of Simpkinson, who completed several studies of Tasmanian Aborigines, and Duterrau who is perhaps best known for his paintings and engravings of Tasmanian Aborigines (see Chapter 4).

The exhibition Panoramic Views, presented by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 2015-16, offered visitors a sample from three centuries of mostly colonial works held by the institution. Amongst the twenty views of Hobart or its environs, all produced from 1826 to 1895, none included Aborigines,383 _{although one was}

eventually to prove an exception. With examples from across the British Empire, the exhibition incorporated a view of Mauritius by Augustus Earle (1793-1838). Earle also completed a Panorama of Hobart Town (c. 1825) that is held in the Dixon Gallery of the SLNSW (fig. X). While this work is consistent with the corpus of Tasmanian views that reject Aborigines from the picturesque composition, a later copy of Earle’s panorama is quite different.

Augustus Earle frequently painted Aboriginal people, either as picturesque additions to his landscapes, such as Two men in a canoe with a fire aboard in Port Jackson New South Wales, (c. 1825) or as subjects; such as A view in Parramatta N. S. Wales looking East (1825-28), in which an Aboriginal man and woman with an infant are camped next to a public pathway, being gestured to move on by an official in a red coat. This and other paintings alluding to the social relations between Aborigines and authorities comprise six of eleven pictures in the collection of watercolours in the volume Views of N. S. Wales held by the Mitchell Collection of the SLNSW. Earle’s interest in Aboriginal subjects is also highlighted by his much-reproduced portraits of

Bungaree (c. 1830).

Augustus Earle’s clear interest in exotic subjects is not surprising from an artist who had spent the period immediately prior to arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in South America, where he painted Gate of Pernambuco, in Brazil, with New Negroes (1821),

demonstrating his attention to the subject of emancipation. This painting, illustrating the decision to provide housing to slaves due to civil unrest, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824.384 _{In fact, the artist’s body of work produced immediately} prior to his arrival in Hobart typically featured studies of individuals and slave

383 _{Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 'Panoramic Views', on line edition (Hobart: TMAG,} 2015).

384 _{Kerr, The Dictionary of Australian Artists : Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and}

culture, and suggest an appetite by the artist for exotic subjects and an interest in diverse and marginal peoples. Yet, after four months spent in Van Diemen’s Land, not one of his paintings included a Tasmanian Aborigine. This is despite the confirmed presence of Aborigines around Hobart at the time, including the large group of sixty visiting the governor just large groups visiting the governor in

November, 1824, just two months before Earle’s arrival in the town.385 After leaving Hobart, Earle established himself in Sydney and continued his travelling, painting places and indigenous people in his travels around the colony, and later across the Pacific and into southeast Asia and India. During his time in New Zealand, he created numerous studies of Maori. It remains curious then, that his stay in Hobart should mark a period during which he seems to abandon this interest, especially as conflict between settlers and Aborigines was increasing significantly at the time.

Was it not possible to obtain Aboriginal subjects for his compositions while in Van Diemen’s Land, or was he discouraged from this interest? Earle’s painting ‘Cluny Park, Van Diemen’s Land’ (c. 1825), is identified with a note on the verso ‘The general appearance of the country in its natural state/perfect Park scenery.’386 It is difficult to not be intrigued by the apparent continuation of the practice of Lewin and Evans, emphasising the advanced civility and suitability for settlement of Van Diemen’s Land, and excluding reference to Aborigines. Earle was in Hobart Town from January to May 1825, during which time he is thought to have completed his panorama. Aboriginal people were at that time visiting Hobart Town in large numbers.387

Earle’s Panorama of Hobart featured a number of distant colonists attending to a battery and even further away, as figures on the streets (fig. 56). The only figures in the foreground are two men at semaphore masts. If this was a formula considered suitable by those advising the artist in Hobart, it proved not to be the case for

385 _{Earle arrived in Hobart on 18 January 1825 and departed for Sydney 14 May, 1825. See} Jocelyn Hackforth Jones, Augustus Earle: Travel Artist (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1980). p. 148.

386 _{Hendrik Kolenberg and Julianna Kolenberg, Tasmanian Vision: The Art of Nineteenth}

Century Tasmania: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture from European Exploration and Settlement to 1900 (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1987). p. 64.

387 _{Boyce notes a visit by over 60 Aborigines to Hobart in November 1824, where they were} entertained by the Governor, Boyce, Van Diemen's Land. p. 186.

promoters of art at the metropolitan heart of the empire. Four years after Earl

completed his panorama, Robert Burford (1791-1861) created a large-scale version of the work for exhibition in London. The original no longer exists, but a guide to the exhibition on the Strand was published in 1831.

Figure 56 - Augustus Earle, Panorama of Hobart, c. 1825, series of watercolour drawings, State Library of New South Wales (above); Robert Burford, Explanation of a View of Hobart Town, Exhibiting at the Panorama, Strand, 1831, hand coloured

engraving, Special and Rare Books Collection, University of Tasmania (below).

This engraving (see fig. 56) shows that Burford had embellished the picture. Joan Kerr notes, ‘Burford's artists added local colour such as a chain gang and convict

group to Earle's Arcadian view of this sedate British outpost.’388 However, Kerr fails to note the significant addition of groups of figures unambiguously intended to represent Aborigines seated at far left and right (see fig. 57). The group at right is clearly identified in the published key to the exhibition as a ‘Group of Natives’.389 It seems that Kerr had not noticed their absence in the original Earle drawing, and had therefore not realized the significance of this addition.

Figure 57 - Robert Burford, Explanation of a View of Hobart Town, Exhibiting at the Panorama, Strand, 1831, hand coloured engraving after Earl (detail). Special and Rare Books Collection, University of Tasmania (left).

Burford probably specified the addition of Aborigines to the Tasmanian panorama as a result of reproducing an earlier panorama of Sydney Town by James Taylor.390 This work included Aborigines and was presented by Burford and Henry Barker at their Leicester Square Panorama in 1821. The Tasmanian Aboriginal figures are the only known examples appearing in a nineteenth-century panoramic view of any scale, and have been added to the scene in a location precisely consistent with the template established by Taylor (fig. 55).

388 _{Kerr, The Dictionary of Australian Artists : Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and}

Engravers to 1870 p. 234.

389 _{Another group of Aborigines, and a lone figure sitting close by appears at far left, although} these are not identified in the key.

390 _{Kerr, The Dictionary of Australian Artists : Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and}