BETWEEN JERVIS AND BATEMANS BAY NEAR NARRAWALLEE, NEW SOUTH WALES, 1830
ROBERT HODDLE
watercolour on paper
32.0 x 48.0 cm
inscribed with title, artist's name and date below image: Between Jervis and Batesmans [sic] Bay near Narrawallee, New South Wales by Robert Hoddle. R.M.S.&D. 1830.
Private collection, Victoria
Thence by descent
Private collection, Victoria
The Pigeon House Near Jervis Bay, New South Wales, 1829, watercolour, 28.0 x 42.0 cm, Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 11 October 2004, lot 260
While Robert Hoddle is best known as the planner of the wide city streets and linking boulevards of Melbourne, his skill with the pencil provided some memorable images of colonial times, early views of town and countryside. One fascinating watercolour, Near Collingwood, Port Phillip District of 1847 depicts a horse grazing in open fields! Trained as a surveyor, skill as a draughtsman was a prerequisite that could be applied as much to town planning as the landscape, as seen in our watercolour, Between Jervis and Batemans Bay Near Narrawallee, New South Wales, 1830. Invariably peopled with settlers, surveyor- explorers, and Aborigines, Hoddle himself often appeared in his picture, seated, as in this work, on rocks, pencil and sketchbook in hand recording the virgin scene for posterity. Today, Narrawallee, a corruption of the Aboriginal words 'Nurrawerree' or 'Narra Warra', is a village on the south coast of New South Wales.
Hoddle, who arrived in Sydney in 1823, was for a time assistant to Surveyor-General John Oxley. He busied himself undertaking surveys in the Blue Mountains, spending some twelve years in New South Wales, including the districts of Berrima, Moss Vale, Jervis Bay and Illawarra during the late twenties and early thirties. A related view is inscribed 'The Mountains named The Pigeon House near Jervis Bay, Castle Hill; and the Clyde River, New South Wales' and dates from 1829, capturing, as does our work, such geological eccentricities as the central mount which dominates the view. Hoddle moved to Port Phillip in 1837, being appointed senior surveyor and again undertaking surveys of Geelong and other areas of country Victoria. His watercolours continued to record the early scenes such as Near Mr. Ryrie's Station, Yarra Yarra River, and Main's Bridge, Moonee Moonee Ponds near Melbourne of 1847. Hoddle's watercolours aroused much attention, being so popular that other artists such as Thomas Clark (Tom Roberts's master) and Henry Gritten were engaged to make oil paintings based on them years later.
DAVID THOMAS