1. Introduction
   • 1.1 Description of Catalogue of Works
   • 1.2 List of Abbreviations
   • 1.3 References
   • 1.4 Index to Artists
2. Catalogue of Works - Chronological by Artist
   • 2.1 Aboriginal Art - 1840
   • 2.2 1840 - 1860
   • 2.3 1861 - 1930
   • 2.4 1931 - 1990

Illawarra possesses a rich artistic heritage for the period 1770 to 1888, with many of Australia’s major colonial period artists having worked in the area during that time. Included amongst those who ventured south of Sydney to this picturesque, relatively inaccessible region were Augustus Earle (1827), Conrad Martens (1835), John Skinner Prout (1843-4), George French Angas (1845, 1851, 1854) Eugene von Guerard (1859), and Nicholas Chevalier (1868), to name but a few. Around the turn of the century artists such as W.C. Piguenit, Tom Roberts, William Lister Lister, and A.H. Fullwood continued the tradition, while Lloyd Rees, Arthur Boyd, Grace Cossington Smith, Brett Whiteley and Colin Lanceley have more recently used Illawarra landscapes and imagery in their art.

The earlier colonial period artists - many of whom were ‘travel artists’ visiting all corners of the globe in search of picturesque landscapes and exotica - were drawn to Illawarra upon hearing of the area’s natural beauty, varied scenery, and abundant flora and fauna. The lush, semitropical Illawarra rainforests were particularly attractive to these wandering artists. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the region was sparsely settled and retained much of its original, unspoilt character - what today is known as wilderness. This did not change until the 1860s when coal mining began in earnest along the escarpment and coastal plain. Prior to this, Illawarra was an area of much natural beauty, with sub-tropical rainforests, green meadows flanked by tall cedar trees and cabbage palms, golden sandy beaches, sparkling ocean waters, clear blue skies, swift-running creeks, and lagoons teaming with fish and wildlife to sustain the native inhabitants. The first white settlers successfully planted crops of wheat and corn, while the temperate climate, high rainfall, and rich soils were an ideal environment for cattle and other livestock. The earliest explorers and surveyors to visit the area, such as Charles Throsby, T.L. Mitchell, Robert Hoddle, and G.W. Evans, were often skilled amateur artists and draughtsmen, and the first to bring images of Illawarra to public attention.

The period 1770-1850 saw an almost frantic quest for knowledge in the Pacific region by the world powers. Britain, France, Russia, and America all sent well-equipped scientific expeditions into the area in search of new flora, fauna, peoples, and lands to conquer and study. Australia, being on the list of newly settled countries, was a popular stopover. It was the task of the travelling artist/draughtsman, either in association with the official expeditions or singularly, as in the case of Augustus Earle, to record for the public the many cultural and geographical features of this strange new land, producing hundreds of botanical studies, landscapes, and portraits of local settlers and Aborigines. Such artists mostly worked in isolation, without any like-minded community to offer comment, criticism or support. Whilst colonial period artists such as Earle and Martens travelled widely throughout eastern Australia during their residence here, they were especially drawn to Illawarra in those early years as it was a picturesque locality situated close to Sydney. In the 1820s and thirties it was also relatively uncorrupted by white settlement due to the physical barriers of the escarpment and dense bush to the north, with the only easy entry by sea. Illawarra, and the Blue Mountain gorges west of Sydney, offered a readily accessible picturesque wilderness. Margaret Menzies, a settler at Kiama, noted in 1840 how the local coastline, with its ragged volcanic outcrops, dense forests and medieval battlement-like escarpment was in want of only a ruined castle and a chivalrous knight to make her feel she was carried back in time and space to some ancient landscape in her beloved Scotland.

More important then its natural picturesque qualities, the Illawarra landscape provided a welcome change from the rather mundane topography and vegetation encountered around Sydney. With its lush flora and fauna and mountainous topography, Illawarra was a half-way house for the colonial period artists, presenting an area with characteristics of both the old, familiar landscapes of Europe, and the new, strange, environment of the Antipodes. The deep canyons and escarpments of the Blue Mountains supplied another place of interest and familiarity for these early artists used to views of the mountains and Alps of Europe. To the Blue Mountains they invariably headed shortly after their arrival in New South Wales. Their second port of call was often Illawarra. Well-heeled travel artists such as Augustus Earle, Conrad Martens and Eugene von Guerard therefore found solace in the mountains and forests of Illawarra and along its shoreline, producing an inordinate number of works in that locality considering the relatively brief periods of their visits. Their search for exotic, interesting scenery took them south and west of the city, to areas more reminiscent of their beloved England.

The Australian bush was a totally foreign environment to our first generations of European settlers and artists used to the lush grassy forests of their homeland. Even the well-heeled travellers amongst them - into which group could be put Earle and Martens, both having travelled throughout South America and the Pacific islands prior to arriving in Australia - found it a continuing challenge to adapt to Australia’s hot and dry climate, though areas such as coastal New South Wales and Tasmania were tropical and lush in many parts, and up until the 1880s the complete antithesis to the modern view of the ‘Australian outback’. To reproduce eastern Australia’s distinctive geographic and atmospheric characteristics in their art was a constant challenge facing every artist. Ultimately professionals such as Conrad Martens and John Skinner Prout were successful in capturing the brilliant light and muted colour of the Australian landscape, prior to the successes of the Heidelberg School artists and Australian Impressionists later in the century.

Such a visually interesting, climatically advantageous, and agriculturally rich region was quickly exploited by its new settlers, causing Governor Richard Bourke to denote the area ‘the Garden of New South Wales’ in 1834 after an initial visit. This moniker was in reference to both the area’s natural lushness, and the more recent successes as a granary for the Colony, producing large harvests of wheat and corn. Bourke subsequently commissioned Conrad Martens to execute two views in watercolour of Wollongong Harbour and Lake Illawarra - views which were meant to sing the praises not only of Illawarra as an area of bountiful harvests, but also of the Colony in general under the Governor’s efficient administration. Bourke immediately despatched these works to friends in England upon their completion in August 1835.

With the major themes of nineteenth century art in Australia being the pictorial representation of the landscape and a delineation of the native flora and fauna for the scientific record, it will be noticed that views depicting the social conditions of the time are few in number. The important role of the convict in early Illawarra society was rarely portrayed, it being an aspect which contemporary society and patrons of the arts tried very hard to ignore. Another topic sadly lacking the representation, which we in the late twentieth century would like, was the portrayal of the role of the local Aborigines in this developing community. Many artists merely used Aboriginal figures as ornaments - along with the ubiquitous kangaroo and emu - to distinguish their work as ‘Australian’. During the nineteenth century few whites showed a sincere interest in the fate of this then fast diminishing race. The Aborigines’ widespread disappearance from Illawarra was so swift (taking just over a single generation!) that it passed almost without comment by the local European settlers. By the 1840s any encounter with them, or large gathering as during a corroboree, was treated as a rare occurrence and novelty. As a result, the dominant theme of nineteenth century art in Illawarra would be the depiction of the natural landscape and the celebration of the white man’s built environment. Art would primarily reflect the interests of wealthy local settlers, concentrating on depictions of properties and family members. The interests of the professional artist were often drawn along similar lines, for they had to make a living and produce what their patrons demanded. Whilst Conrad Martens could be accused of catering solely to the desires of his clients with his many romantic landscapes, Augustus Earle was not so rigidly bound to the ideal of picturesque beauty and we therefore find a deal of social comment within his work. The location and delineation of the Picturesque landscape was the primary goal of the majority of artists in Australia during the colonial period. The dark foreground, framing rocks and trees, with a distant panorama of waterfall, lake, mountains or mansion, was the normal format for a landscape piece, followed by both amateurs and professionals alike, though with varying degrees of success. Artists such as Augustus Earle and George French Angas also saw figurative and botanical elements as important features of the work.

There being no ready market amongst the Gentlemen and Ladies of the Colony for views depicting the toil and punishment of the convicts, nor the deprivations of the Aborigines, both of which were common occurrences in Illawarra, we are left with a plethora of romantic renderings of the Illawarra landscape. Picturesque, artificially composed views were called for - best seen in the watercolours of Conrad Martens - resulting in a rather distorted pictorial image of everyday life as experienced in Illawarra during the nineteenth century. The majority of artists were always attracted to aspects of the areas’ natural beauty, away from the many instances of man-made ugliness or the unfortunate plight of the Aborigines, convicts, and poorer white settlers. The convict road gangs; the regular floggings with a cat-of-nine-tails outside Wollongong Courthouse during the 1830s; the labouring and toil of convicts in chains; the sweat and hardship of the tenant farmers ploughing the fields; the everyday labours of the housewife procuring food and raising children - no images of these common occurrences in the early years of Illawarra’s white history survive.

In the later years of the colonial period (1850s-1880s) the industrialisation of central and northern Illawarra, with the resultant appearance of coal mines, coke ovens, jetties, smelting works and associated facilities was similarly neglected by artists, though slowly taken up by photographers and newspaper illustrators. Views of coal miners at work did not become common until the advent of the camera late in the century. The region’s geographic isolation also meant that the majority of those early pictorial works were recorded upon small, relatively fragile media, as in pencil sketches and watercolours upon paper. Small sketchbooks were preferred as they were easily transportable and cheap - paper and art supplies being difficult to obtain in the Colony prior to the 1850s, after which local production replaced the need to wait months for the arrival of art materials from England. Large studio works in oil upon canvas - the most prestigious, durable, and popular artform of the nineteenth century - were rare for Illawarra subjects prior to the 1850s, as most professional artists worked from Sydney.

A number of artists attempted to depict the variety of man’s interaction with the Illawarra environment during the first half of last century, moving beyond a simple interpretation of the natural landscape. Louis Auguste de Sainson, artist with the French Astrolabe expedition of 1826-29, under the command of Captain Dumont d’Urville, was one example. Apart from producing landscapes and portraits of the local Aborigines of Jervis Bay, his most famous view is of the meeting between these individuals and members of the French expedition in November 1826 - a meeting which resulted in common feasting and dancing amongst the Europeans and Aborigines! The depiction of such a jovial encounter between whites and blacks last century is almost unique in the annals of Australian art. Augustus Earle, a rather eccentric individual, produced a series of small Illawarra watercolours in 1827 and a large oil entitled A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia, in a Cabbage Tree Forest, Daybreak [1838], which depicted the intimacy between a group of European travellers in the Illawarra bush and their Aboriginal guides in 1827. His portrayal within a small watercolour of a skirmish between bushrangers and police in the Illawarra bush is also a rare social document. Less adventurous, Robert Marsh Westmacott, a retired Army Captain who was a resident of Illawarra between 1837-47, on many occasions included Aborigines in his sketches, both as decorations and ethnographic records. Westmacott’s small watercolour Wollongong from the stockade, April 20, 1840 is unique in its depiction of members of the local military garrison alongside convicts engaged in breaking stone for the local harbour and breakwater construction.

Illawarra was a veritable ‘Garden of Eden’ when Captain Cook and members of his crew attempted a landing at Bulli from the Endeavour in April 1770. Whilst off the Illawarra coast Cook had observed two prominent local geographical features - Mount Kembla or Hatt Hill (‘a round hill the top of which look’d like the Crown of a hatt’), and Red Point (Hill 60, Port Kembla), both of which, along with Lake Illawarra and Mount Keira, were to feature prominently in future depictions of the landscape. During the sailpast, Cook’s young draughtsman Sidney Parkinson sketched a coastal profile of the area from Red Point to Brokers Nose (Corrimal). This work in pencil is the first drawing by a European to feature Illawarra. The earliest non-Aboriginal artist known to have worked in Illawarra was surveyor-explorer George W. Evans, who travelled overland from Jervis Bay to Appin, via Wollongong, in 1813. Unfortunately none of the works he noted in his journal as having taken during this expedition survive. Prior to this bird and plant collectors, including naturalist Robert Brown, had visited Illawarra as early as 1804, however it is unknown whether they took any botanical sketches or drawings of wildlife during these visits.

The earliest extant landscapes of Illawarra are those by Sophia Campbell, wife of the Sydney merchant Robert Campbell. In 1816 she visited the area (possibly to select land, or merely as a tourist), and subsequently produced a number of watercolour views of the coast near Wollongong and Lake Illawarra. The most striking of these portrays a storm with lightning, and a group of Aborigines standing in awe in the foreground. Others include views of a roughly hewn stockman’s hut, and general landscape pieces. Mrs Campbell was a competent amateur artist, aware of picturesque technique, producing works to illustrate her diaries. The convict artist Joseph Lycett painted a watercolour View on the Illawarra River about 80 miles from Sydney, New South Wales around 1820, though details of the specific locality of the scene are sketchy. It is most likely a view of the upper reaches of the Shoalhaven River, east of Marulan. Whether Lycett actually visited Illawarra is doubtful, it being his practice to copy the works of other artists such as the explorer G.W. Evans who had visited the isolated, sparsely settled areas of the Colony. Both Campbell and Lycett portray the relatively untouched wilderness, which was Illawarra prior to the arrival of white settlers with their cattle, sheep and plough in the 1820s.

The period 1770-1850 saw a number of exploring and scientific expeditions visit Australia. The first, after Cook, to touch on the southern extremity of Illawarra and leave a pictorial record was the French expedition of 1826-29, under the command of Jules Dumont d’Urville, though Jacques Arago, artist with the earlier Freycinet expedition, had taken the portrait of an Illawarra Aborigine named Timbere (or Timbery) at Botany Bay in 1819. D’Urville’s ship Astrolabe visited Jervis Bay during November 1826. The artist on board, Louis Auguste de Sainson, took a number of views whilst in the area, many depicting the nearby landscape and local natives. An extremely convivial meeting between the sailors of Astrolabe and the Aborigines, showing them sharing in a catch of fish, is portrayed in a lithograph published in the official account of the expedition.

The earliest professional to visit Illawarra was the English/American travel artist Augustus Earle, who had visited such exotic localities as Tristan da Cunha and South America prior to his arrival in New South Wales in October 1825. In April-May 1827 he undertook a brief, though fateful journey to Illawarra, travelling down the Bulli mountain and along the coast past Wollongong to Kiama. During that visit he was moved by the lush, over-powering Illawarra forest and rugged coastline, producing a number of small watercolours on those themes. In 1838, following his return to England and just prior to his death, he presented at exhibition a large work in oil based upon one of these watercolours. Titled A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia, in a Cabbage Tree Forest, Daybreak, this is a significant work in the annals of Australian art, referred to in a number of historical surveys. It illustrates many aspects typical of life in the Australian bush in the late 1820s, portraying a group of Europeans (settlers and convicts) and Aborigines camping under the stars in the Illawarra forest, dining on kangaroo meat, and reminiscing of their families back home in England and times gone by. The Aboriginal guides, the campfire, and the thick cabbage tree forest of Illawarra through which Earle passed in 1827, are all shown. The actual locality of this view is near the present-day mountain pass at Bulli. In the 1820s this oldest road into Illawarra descended near this route and half-way down stood a massive, hollowed-out tree known as ‘Government House’. It was often used as overnight accommodation during the journey down the steep escarpment. Such was the size of this tree that it was able to accommodate two riders seated upon their horses. Near ‘Government House’ Earle and his group camped (bivouacked), producing the elements for the aforementioned romantic work.

Another of Earle’s small watercolours presents a view of a Skirmish between Bushrangers and Constables, Illawarra. Once again this is an important work in the annals of Australian colonial art, presenting a rare view of a not so rare event in the Colony at that time, and one especially common in Illawarra. The pursuit of escaped convicts by the local constabulary or members of the army regiment stationed at the district stockade was an everyday occurrence in the Colony during the convict period. Faced with harsh taskmasters and regular thrashings, or public floggings with a cat of nine tails, many convicts had no qualms about fleeing into the bush. Though ill equipped for survival in this strange environment, they nonetheless left their masters and chains in search of freedom. Many blindly headed north of Sydney (towards China!), ignorant of the distances involved in this hopeless quest, yet willing to go to any length in search of freedom. Others took to the bush, and those who didn’t starve to death were invariably caught soon after - usually by local Aborigines - and either returned to their masters or put on a chain gang engaged in the building of roads and other public works. Earle’s portrayal of a skirmish between police and convicts in the Illawarra bush is a subject not often portrayed by our colonial period artists. The events surrounding Earle’s trip to Illawarra in April-May 1827 are summarised in a piece of doggerel (common rhyming slang) written by him at Appin whilst recovering from a broken leg suffered on the return journey from Illawarra. Perhaps the numerous Illawarra watercolours were also executed during this period of convalescence. He left the Colony the following year.

Following Earle’s visit in 1827, the region was not comprehensively painted or sketched until a visit in July 1835 by Conrad Martens, the finest watercolourist of the nineteenth century to settle in Australia. In the period between the visits of Earle and Martens a number of minor amateur artists worked in the area, including Robert Hoddle (surveyor) in 1830 and Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (Surveyor General) in 1834. Charles Rodius produced some portraits of Illawarra Aborigines in 1834 but they were most likely taken in Sydney. Robert Hoddle, who visited Illawarra as part of his surveying duties associated with the building the Kiama to Bong Bong road in 1830, is perhaps best remembered for his lively watercolour of Pumpkin Cottage, the original slab cottage of Henry Osborne, a local settler at Marshall Mount near Dapto. Osborne later achieved fame as an Overlander, taking stock to South Australia in 1839, and was one of the wealthiest men in the Colony when he died in 1859, with numerous business and coal mining interests. Hoddle’s classic watercolour of Osborne’s first Illawarra home reveals just how primitive, ramshackled, and yet complex a settler’s hut of the early 1830s could be, with no sophisticated building materials such as bricks and mortar then readily available, though some of the finest woods in Australia, such as the red cedar, locally abundant.

Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, noted explorer and Surveyor General of the Colony, was also a competent artist. During 1834 he visited Illawarra to survey the town of Wollongong and prepare roads for the surrounding district. He returned to Illawarra briefly in 1843. His 1834 pencil sketch of Wollongong from Flagstaff Point is the earliest view we have of the burgeoning town and harbour which would shortly become the commercial centre of the region.

Portraits of Illawarra Aborigines, possibly all taken in Sydney, were recorded during the 1830s by both Charles Rodius (1834) and William Henry Fernyhough (1836). Fernyhough’s lithographs of New South Wales natives, including Bill Worrall, Five Islands Tribe, are often grotesque caricatures, reflecting the Aborigines increasing degradation by white society and perceptions thereof within the non-Aboriginal community. Rodius’s equivalent works portray a natural beauty, and present the Aborigine as a member of a dignified race, maintaining their humanity amongst the barbarity of the white invaders. De Sainson (1826), Captain Westmacott (1837-47), and Skinner Prout (1844) also took portraits and recorded various aspects of the diminishing culture of the Illawarra Aborigines.

The period 1835-45 proved to be one of much activity for artists working in Illawarra. It is from this decade that we possess our most comprehensive and varied pictorial record of nineteenth century Illawarra. The large number of artists to visit the region during this period ranged from the important professionals such as Conrad Martens, John Skinner Prout, Maurice Felton, and the American Alfred T. Agate of the United States Exploring Expedition, through to the prolific yet proficient amateurs such as Robert Marsh Westmacott, Georgiana Lowe, and Abraham Lincolne. A large number of pencil sketches, watercolours, and lithographs were produced as a result, recording aspects of the Illawarra landscape, its inhabitants (both indigenous and introduced), and its flora and fauna. This period was also one which entertained radical change in the young Colony of New South Wales. The governorship of Richard Bourke prepared Australia for its transformation from penal colony to free settlement. The years 1835-40 saw unprecedented prosperity for many of its most prominent settlers, along with the arrival of large numbers of convicts and free immigrants. This new affluence and excess of cheap labour gave rise to increased leisure time for the well-to-do. Illawarra, and specifically Wollongong, was promoted in Sydney as a holiday resort, with an 1840 newspaper notice proclaiming it ‘the Brighton of the south’.

This increasing affluence resulted in wider public interest in the arts and more commissions for the few professional artists then resident in the Colony. During the late thirties art patronage flourished like never before, with a flurry of mansion building activity in Sydney providing walls for hanging. Besides depictions of the landscape, portraiture was the most popular form of art then practised, with prominent citizens having their visage captured on canvas for posterity by skilled artists such as Maurice Felton. Portraiture was perhaps the most public, and common form of art in the Colony during the middle part of the nineteenth century, prior to the widespread introduction of photography in the 1870s. As it is a universal artform, with usually no specifically regional aspects, it will not be discussed at length in this essay. Portrait painters were eventually replaced by photographers, however Illawarra, with its picturesque landscape and rainforest vegetation, proved popular with portrait and landscape photographers and postcard producers right through to the 1930s. Unfortunately the economic boom years of 1835-40 were followed by a period of depression throughout the Colony between 1841-45, and bankruptcy for many of those self same ‘prominent citizens’. This threatened the economic viability of the few professional artists in the Colony at the time. John Skinner Prout moved to Tasmania in 1844, where he was favoured until 1848, whilst Conrad Martens struggled on in Sydney. A genuine public interest in, and support of, Australian art (i.e. works by Colonial artists of with local subjects) did not occur until long after the gold rushes of the 1850s. However despite the economic gloom of the 1840s, many amateur and professional artists continued to journey south of Sydney to Illawarra in the years 1840-45.

It was possibly as the result of a commission from Governor Richard Bourke that Conrad Martens (1801-1878) visited Illawarra in July 1835. Martens was perhaps the most important of the colonial period artists, along with Augustus Earle and Eugene von Guerard, to work in Illawarra. He was also the most prolific. Martens arrived in Sydney on 17 April 1835, at the end of a hectic two years of travelling the globe as a professional artist. For a year he was engaged as official artist aboard the HMS Beagle during its survey of the South American coast. His colleagues on that voyage included Charles Darwin (famous for his theory of Evolution), and Captain Robert Fitzroy, later Governor of New Zealand and the founder of the modern science of Meteorology. Martens had also worked briefly with Augustus Earle (in 1833) prior to joining the Beagle. Earle, then resident artist with the expedition, was forced to leave due to ill health. Perhaps he had mentioned to Martens that if ever he artist should visit New South Wales a journey to Illawarra would be amply rewarded.

After leaving the Beagle late in 1834, Martens travelled to Australia via Tahiti and New Zealand. His visit to Illawarra just three months after his arrival in the Colony would have brought to mind the lush, tropical vegetation and varied landscapes he had so recently left behind in South America and the islands of the Pacific. In fact, one of his earliest views of Lake Illawarra, painted in 1835, was considered so ‘tropical’ that for many years it was catalogued by the Mitchell Library as a South American lake scene. It bore the strong influence of Martens’ South American collaborator, the German artist J.M. Rugendas. Though in the area for only ten days (7-16 July 1835), his resulting pencil sketches, watercolours, oils and lithographs of the Illawarra landscapes and flora comprise some 85 known works, executed over a period between 1835 and 1877 (the year before his death). Martens’ preferred medium was watercolour, and he was extremely skilled in its use. As a professional artist and sketcher he was both prolific and methodical, and his movements during his visit to Illawarra can be accurately mapped out based on information contained in his many signed and dated pencil sketches taken during the visit. His account book in the Dixson Library - Account of Pictures Painted at N.S.Wales [1835-78] - also provides a wealth of information, recording the numerous works based on Illawarra scenes sold to various patrons over the following years. Clients to purchase Illawarra views included Governor Bourke, the Macarthur family of Camden, the Elyards, and Lord Schomberg Kerr.

In 1860 Martens visited Coolangatta, the property near Nowra of his friend and Illawarra pioneer Alexander Berry. Together with his central Illawarra paintings and drawings, these Shoalhaven views bring to almost one hundred the number of works by the artist depicting Illawarra. Whilst the majority are landscape views, there are also many sketches of native flora such as figtrees, cabbage palms, ferns and flowers. Like Augustus Earle before him, Conrad Martens was intrigued by the lushness and variety of the Illawarra forests. Figures and portraits did not interest him, though he was competent in their execution. Martens has left a rich legacy of delightfully romantic depictions of local scenery, portraying an almost primeval Illawarra landscape, and one in which humankind plays an insignificant role. Martens was well-known for his ability to select picturesque sites, and his Illawarra works are testament to this skill. The Illawarra landscape has never been more romantically portrayed than within a Martens watercolour.

Though obviously not as talented as Conrad Martens, Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott (1801-1870), an amateur artist and draughtsman with a military background, is perhaps of greater import to the region as a pictorial chronicler of the period 1837-47. His works are geographically more diverse and of wider subject matter. Captain Westmacott initially visited Illawarra in 1834 whilst Aid-de-camp to Governor Richard Bourke, returning with Bourke in 1835. Westmacott, like Bourke, was so enchanted by the area that in 1837 he resigned his Army commission to settle in the northern part of the district, near Bulli. From that time until his return to England in 1847 he was an active member of the local community in the roles of farmer, horse breeder, builder, brickmaker, land speculator, magistrate and part owner of the first local steamship service. Throughout this period Westmacott produced a number of fine pencil sketches and watercolour and wash drawings. His coverage of the Illawarra and South Coast landscape was far and wide, from Twofold Bay, Pambula, and Jervis Bay in the south; through Kiama and Jamberoo; to Bulli and Stanwell Park in the north. During his lifetime he published two series of lithographic views of Australian scenes, based upon his many drawings. Each series was to contain a number of Illawarra subjects. The first was printed in England, and published in Sydney in May 1838; the second was also produced in England, and appeared in 1848, a year after his return their. In many instances the lithographs were hand-coloured in the manner of a watercolour by Westmacott himself prior to sale. Westmacott’s lithograph of 1838 entitled Illawarra Lake is the earliest published view of the district. It is taken from a point on the Illawarra escarpment and looks east across Lake Illawarra and the Albion Park district towards Bass Point and the Pacific Ocean. His landscapes, though small, are attractive and informative, as are his depictions of the local Aborigines, though his figures are weak. His hatched style of pencil sketching is not as elegant as the equivalent works by Conrad Martens and Eugene von Guerard, while the artist’s watercolour Wollongong from the Stockade, 1840 is an important historical work.

During December 1839-January 1840 Alfred T. Agate, artist with the United States Exploring Expedition then in port at Sydney, briefly visited Illawarra in the company of geologists J.D. Dana (also a member of the Expedition and an amateur artist) and the Reverend W.B. Clarke. Images taken by Agate and subsequently published as engravings within the account of the Expedition include views of the Illawarra rainforest and a corroboree witnessed near Wollongong.

Abraham Lincolne was a local resident and amateur artist, sketching in the Kiama district between 1840-44 whilst employed as superintendent of the Woodstock Mills at Jamberoo, and produced highly detailed pencil drawings of properties and landscapes at both Kiama and Jamberoo. He left Illawarra in 1844 and eventually settled in Victoria. A neighbour and contemporary was James Waugh, whose Jamberoo sketchbook is full of detail concerning that community.

The next major artist to work in the area during the period 1835-1845 was John Skinner Prout, second only to Conrad Martens in skill as a professional watercolourist working in the Colony in the 1840s. Prout journeyed to Illawarra in December 1843 - January 1844, producing watercolour views of Lake Illawarra, Tom Thumb’s Lagoon, and the lush vegetation near Mount Keira. During his visit he also painted the portraits of a number of local natives, including Old Frying Pan - an infamous Aborigine who roamed the streets of Wollongong - and Yannah Wah. In 1844 Prout moved from Sydney to Tasmania for economic reasons, and remained there until returning to England in 1848. Many of his Illawarra watercolours of the 1840s were reproduced as engravings in Edwin Carton Booth’s Australia Illustrated, published in London between 1873-76.

Georgiana Lowe, wife of politician Robert Lowe, was a regular visitor to Illawarra between 1843-49, producing numerous watercolours and pencil sketches of scenery around Wollongong and Kangaroo Valley, along with botanical drawings. Despite vagaries in the perspective of many of her landscapes, they nevertheless form an enchanting, colourful collection, revealing the lush vegetation of the area which so attracted her. Georgiana’s use of bright greens and blues was unconventional for her time, and reflect her unique personality.

From 1845-63 Illawarra remained a popular destination for travelling artists, with visits from George French Angas, Mrs Godfrey Mundy, J.G. Sawkins, Henry Gritten, F.C. Terry, W. Swainson, Joseph Selleny, Louisa Atkinson, Helena Ford Scott and Eugene von Guerard, amongst others. The first of this group, George French Angas, was very much a travel-artist in the mould of Augustus Earle, skilled in both landscape and portraiture. He visited the areas around Dapto and Wollongong during August 1845 and again in 1851, whilst in 1854 he was at Kiama. Like many artists before him, he found favour in sketching the distinctive Illawarra landscape and flora of cabbage palms, ferns, figtrees, vines etc., though he was also interested in the local Aborigines. Angas’s most famous Illawarra work is a watercolour view of Mr Jessott’s farm at west Dapto, near Marshall Mount. The view was lithographed to form the frontispiece of his 1847 book Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand. Its subject matter includes the incredibly tall and slender cabbage palms and lush vegetation of the area, the overpowering presence of the nearby escarpment, and the settler’s homestead and outbuildings in the centre foreground, with cattle grazing.

F.C. Terry was an artist in the mould of Conrad Martens. He visited Illawarra initially in 1855 and went on to produce a number of picturesque views (mainly watercolours) of Illawarra in the 1850s and 60s. He was especially interested in the lush vegetation of the escarpment and the stunning ocean views from its edge, with his View from Bulli Pass 1863 a well-known example, existing in a number of variations. Many of his works are an amalgamation of different views, therefore they are difficult to precisely isolate topographically.

The most important artist to visit Illawarra during the 1850s was Eugene von Guerard, the German artist then resident in Melbourne. Von Guerard arrived in Illawarra early in December 1859, and saw the area in a similar light to Angas, attracted to the lush forests around Wollongong, American Creek near Figtree, and Kiama. He had been strongly influenced by the German Romantic movement during his training there as a painter prior to his arrival in Australia in 1853. Von Guerard’s art is finely detailed, almost photographic. Whilst his works in oil display none of the fragile, romantic qualities of a Conrad Martens or Skinner Prout watercolour, they are nonetheless highly regarded for both their skill of execution and large amount of detail - the latter of increasing significance in an historical work. It is unfortunate that, despite their beauty, they present a rather European view of Illawarra in their colouring and tone, though they have captured the dark and dense tones of the Illawarra forests. The various von Guerard oils and pencil sketches of Illawarra display his highly detailed sketching style and fondness for the deep green hues of the lush Illawarra vegetation. Eugen von Guerard’s art lends itself to minute inspection as it is so full of geographical, geological, and human detail; however he is far from being the social commentator that his contemporary Samuel Thomas Gill proved to be - Gill being the only major colonial period artist not to visit Illawarra whilst he was resident in New South Wales between 1856-64, though a work by him entitled Coo..oo..ooee!! [Shoalhaven Gorges] suggests that he visited its western extremities around 1859.

Von Guerard’s visit marks the end of an era in the art history of Illawarra, for the face of the local landscape began to change drastically as the population increased and coal mining was widely introduced along the Illawarra escarpment during the 1850s and 60s following the opening of the first mine at Mount Keira in 1849. We merely have to look to the foreground of von Guerard’s Cabbage tree forest, Amerikan Creek 1860 to see the destruction of the magnificent escarpment forest by a new settler. Whilst today we marvel at the lushness of the Illawarra vegetation portrayed in this work, we look with disdain upon the enterprising settler making his home amongst this primeval wilderness, and bemoan its destruction. This physical transformation of the Illawarra landscape was slow at first, however by the end of the century mine portals, coal stockpiles, company railways, coke oven stacks, and coal-loading jetties were all common sights and much of the forest of the coastal plain had been destroyed by cedar getters and land clearers. During the 1850s amateur artists such as John Rae (1851), J.G. Sawkins (1852-53), J.F. Korff (1853), and W.G. Mason (1854) had begun to sketch views of the developing township of Wollongong, the harbour, and new buildings associated with burgeoning townships, reflecting this industrial and urban development.

When Nicholas Chevalier visited Wollongong in 1868 one of the images he used to represent Illawarra was the remains of a shipwreck, washed upon a beach near Wollongong. No longer was the semi-tropical forest presented as the most distinctive feature of the Illawarra landscape. The forests were scared, so Chevalier looked towards the land-ocean boundary for inspiration. He found a sandy beach and rocky coastline - harking back to the ‘picturesque’ scenery of old - and the remains of a vessel washed upon the shore. The shipwreck - probably a collier or cargo ship - is a symbol of the industrial revolution as it was occurring in Illawarra. Steam was displacing sail on the high seas, and coal, with which Illawarra was so richly provided, was a very important element of this industrialisation. Governor Bourke’s ‘Garden of New South Wales’ of 1834 was slowly being transformed into an industrial area serving Sydney. Chevalier’s combination of picturesque landscape with the scars of white civilisation is telling.

On the surface the artistic record appears meagre in presenting aspects of the introduction of coal mining and other industries to Illawarra in the later half of the nineteenth century. Fortunately there survives a large collection of photographs and prints to fill this gap, with photography replacing painting as the cheapest and most popular pictorial media following its widespread introduction in the 1870s. Also, the illustrated newspapers of the day, including The Illustrated Sydney News, The Town and Country Journal, and The Sydney Mail, from 1853 published many engravings depicting the industrialisation of the area, including views of harbour works, coke ovens, jetties, and coal and shale oil mines. Whereas in the 1840s agriculture and livestock were the main sources of economic survival throughout the district, by the 1880s coal mining was the principal source of income, with mining villages appearing along the escarpment close to the mine entrances. The railway had been introduced in 1888, and farming (like the unfortunate local Aborigines fifty years before) was being displaced from its position of prominence. A ‘golden age’ of colonial period art in Illawarra ended with the visit of Eugene von Guerard to Wollongong and Kiama in 1859. From then until the late 1880s the only artists of merit to work in Illawarra were Nicholas Chevalier, W.C. Piguenit, J.H. Carse, and Samuel Elyard, while their legacy was in no way as substantial as those who had come before. Artists such as Elyard and Carse, working in Illawarra in the 1870s, still saw the area through the eyes of early nineteenth century Romantics such as Conrad Martens. J.H. Carse produced a view of Aboriginals by Lake Illawarra in 1875, however this work is almost an historical piece, portraying not Illawarra of the 1870s, but the idyllic Illawarra of 1770, prior to the arrival of Europeans, with naked Aborigines blissfully fishing by the lake. Samuel Elyard, whose family were early settlers of the district in the 1830s, was a watercolourist in the style of Conrad Martens, and sometime portrait painter. He had mainly worked in Sydney from the 1840s to the 1860s, however when he retired to the Shoalhaven in the seventies he produced numerous watercolour views of the district in the style of his earlier works. He also experimented in the new art of photography.

Nicholas Chevalier and his contemporaries of the 1860s and seventies, mark a transition in both the type of artist to visit Illawarra and the way the local landscape was portrayed. They were the last of the true colonial period artists - emigrant or local. They had been classically trained according to the traditions of British and European art; usually arrived in Australia in their thirties (though Piguenit was Australian-born), and saw the local landscape very much through foreign eyes. Despite this, they were nevertheless skilful and professional, succeeding in capturing the essence of the local light and colour despite the comments of recent critics who would suggest otherwise. Those major artists who followed during the 1880s and later, such as Tom Roberts, A.H. Fullwood and William Lister Lister, were a different breed. They were subject to new influences in art, especially the French Impressionist movement of the 1870s. More importantly, they saw themselves as ‘Australian’ artists, and attacked the local landscape with vigour. They were eventually considered successful in portraying the feel of the Australian bush in a way different from the colonial period artists. However they were of a new era, and should not be directly compared with individuals such as Conrad Martens and John Skinner Prout who had set the foundations for an indigenous Australian art almost half a century before.

Illawarra is indeed fortunate that so many of the major artists of the colonial period - such as Conrad Martens, John Skinner Prout, and Eugene von Guerard - visited the region, and in the years since, important artists such as Lloyd Rees, Arthur Boyd and Grace Cossington Smith have used it as a backdrop for their canvases. Illawarra performed an important role in Australian art in the early to middle years of the nineteenth century, assisting in the acclimatisation of our imported - and important - artists, acting as a halfway house between the familiar European landscape and the unfamiliar Australian bush. Making the artists feel at ease in what was for many to become their adopted homeland. The value of many of their works of art, including those numerous examples by amateurs which may be lacking in refinement, technique, and/or emotion, will be their time-capsule effect - the ability to capture a moment in our history; a moment so distant that no other image remains; a moment, perhaps, so ordinary and indifferent that no other record exists apart from that produced/perceived by the artist. It has taken non-Aboriginal Australians over two hundred years to come to appreciate the value of their indigenous history and art, and of the fragile landscape which surrounds them. May this appreciation continue to grow, for art survives and inspires where memory and man fail.

1.1 Description of Catalogue of Works

The following compilation is neither simply a catalogue of the work of artists resident in Illawarra (i.e. 'Illawarra artists'), nor of works physically painted in the area. It is a catalogue of images of the Illawarra landscape and its people, with special emphasis on the period pre 1888. Nevertheless, despite these constraints, many of the artists listed were/are local residents and contemporary (1990) works are listed. Items of sculpture, ceramics, collage, photographs, postcards, and other visual media have not, generally, been included unless considered significant (i.e. obey the above stated criteria), though early newspaper engravings and prints are listed.

Within the overall chronological framework of the catalogue, the work of each artist is grouped together into a single section according to their earliest known painting or drawing of the region. For example, the work of Lloyd Rees - who depicted Illawarra in his art over a lengthy period, from 1934 to 1988 - is located at the year 1934 in Part 1 of the catalogue; Conrad Martens is to be found at 1835, which is the date of his first visit to Illawarra, though he is known to have painted an Illawarra view as late as 1877. Where the exact date or general period during which an artist worked in Illawarra is unknown, and their paintings are undated, the editor has allocated their entry to an approximate decade or placed them within the Undated section at the end of the catalogue. Access to any artist is facilitated by the index at the end of the catalogue.

The descriptions of individual works within this catalogue are not as comprehensive as one would associate with, for example, a catalogue raisonne. They are basic listings only, containing historical and biographical information on artists plus brief descriptions of their Illawarra works. References to more detailed descriptions, where available, are given. Each description within the catalogue includes information such as title, date, medium, size, and owner, where known. Abbreviations are commonly used. The descriptions are presented in the following format:

Title & Date
Medium / Dimensions / Location/Owner
e.g. Lake Illawarra 1835
Watercolour / 47 x 68cm / DL31

Title and date are as inscribed upon the work or as allocated by former workers. Medium is a summary only, e.g. `Oil' is used to represent `Oil on canvas', `Oil on board', etc. All dimensions are in centimetres unless otherwise indicated. Where there is no entry under `Owner' the present location of the work is unknown. References such as `Christies 3/77' under this section are to auction sales, in this instance the Christies (Australia) sales catalogue of March 1977.

For fuller descriptions of any work listed - such as details of inscriptions, provenance information, etc., - see the references accompanying the entries, or enquire of the holding institution / individual owner.

1.2 Abbreviations

Abbreviations used throughout this catalogue include:

AAA - Australian Art Auctions, auctioneers
ADB - Australian Dictionary of Biography
AGNSW - Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
AGSA - Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
AGWA - Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
ANG - Australian National Gallery, Canberra
AONSW - Archives Office of New South Wales
Ballarat - Ballarat Art Gallery
Benalla - Benalla Art Gallery
Bendigo - Bendigo Art Gallery
Bloomfield - Bloomfield Galleries
Broken Hill - Broken Hill Art Gallery
Brown - Joseph Brown, art dealer, Melbourne
Bussell - Trevor Bussell, art dealer, Sydney
Castlemaine - Castlemaine Gallery
Ch - Charcoal
Christies - Christies, auctioneers
Darwin - Darwin Art Gallery
Deutscher - Chris Deutscher Gallery
DG - Dixson Gallery
DL - Dixson Library
Ellendens - W.S. Ellenden, auctioneers
Ervin - S.H. Ervin Art Gallery & Museum
G - Gouache
Goulburn - Goulburn Art Gallery
Greys - G.K. Grey, auctioneers
Hogart - Hogart Gallery
Holdsworth - Holdsworth Galleries
IHS - Illawarra Historical Society
Joels - Leonard Joel, auctioneers
Lawsons - J.R. Lawson, auctioneers
Lebovic - Josef Lebovic Gallery
Long - Long Gallery, Wollongong University
Manly - Manly Art Gallery
ML - Mitchell Library
NGV - National Gallery of Victoria
NK - Nan Kivell Collection
NLA - National Library of Australia
NRAG - Newcastle Regional Art Gallery
ORAG - Orange Regional Art Gallery
P - Pencil
Pickles - Peter Pickles, auctioneer
Private - Held in a private collection
QAG - Queensland Art Gallery
RAG - Regional Art Gallery
Scheding BerryScheding Berry, art dealers
Schubert - Schubert Gallery
Shoalhaven - Shoalhaven City Council Collection
Sothebys - Sothebys, auctioneers
SW - Sepia Wash
TMAG - Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Warnambool - Warnambool Art Gallery
W/C - Watercolour
WCG - Wollongong City Art Gallery
WCL - Wollongong City Library
Wh - White
Ws - Wash
WU - Wollongong University collection

1. Introduction
   • 1.1 Description of Catalogue of Works
   • 1.2 List of Abbreviations
   • 1.3 References
   • 1.4 Index to Artists
2. Catalogue of Works - Chronological by Artist
   • 2.1 Aboriginal Art - 1840
   • 2.2 1840 - 1860
   • 2.3 1861 - 1930
   • 2.4 1931 - 1990

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