Double Bay from Mr Mort’s, 1859
Conrad Martens
watercolour, bodycolour and gum arabic on paper
44.5 x 63.5 cm
signed lower right: C. Martens
Kenneth R. Stewart Collection, Sydney, until April 1979
Consolidated Press Holdings, Sydney
The H. W. B. Chester Memorial Collection, Sydney
The Dallhold Collection, Perth
Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 23 August 1992, lot 184 (as ‘Double Bay, c.1840s’)
Private collection, London
Conrad Martens Centenary Exhibition, S. H. Ervin Museum and Art Gallery, Sydney, 24 May – 23 July 1978, cat. 41 (as ‘Double Bay, c.1840’)
Conrad Martens: The H. W. B. Chester Memorial Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 December 1979 – 10 February 1980, cat. 14 (as 'Double Bay')
Lindsay, L., Conrad Martens: The Man and His Art, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968, pl. 2 (illus.)
Focus, Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd., staff magazine, June 1979 (illus. front cover)
Dundas, D., The Art of Conrad Martens, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 23, 44 (illus., as ‘Double Bay, c.1840’)
Pearce, B. (ed.), Conrad Martens: The H. W. B. Chester Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1979, cat. 14, pp. 24 (illus., as ‘Double Bay, c.1840s’), 41
de Vries – Evans, S., Conrad Martens on the Beagle and in Australia, Pandanus Press, Brisbane, 1993, p. 157
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When Conrad Martens painted this majestic work in the late 1850s, he was at his peak as an artist. Having weathered the lean years of the 1840s Depression, he regained momentum (and new clients) through his long journey in 1851 – 52 from Brisbane, the Darling Downs and Northern New South Wales and on his return to Sydney, now prospering again due to the discovery of gold, he found renewed interest from art buyers. Martens became, for the first time, a public figure giving lectures and enjoying a reputation which would eventually extend over three decades as Sydney’s preeminent resident artist.
One of his best commissions at this time was for the highly successful industrialist and businessman, Thomas Sutcliffe Mort. Martens had known Mort and his family since the 1840s when he went almost weekly to Darling Point to give lessons to Mort’s wife, Theresa. From late 1847, the family were living at Greenoaks, their very grand Gothic-style mansion high on the eastern side of Darling Point, with its extensive gardens facing Double Bay down to the water’s edge and Point Piper and Bellevue Hill in the middle distance. It was one of the most beautiful sites in Sydney and retains its magic to this day, albeit with the gardens much reduced.
Thomas Mort had an abiding interest in pictures and artefacts and Greenoaks included one of the first private art galleries in Sydney to display his collections. Between 1855 and 1857, Martens painted three large-sized works for Mort depicting scenes in Darling Point including one from Greenoaks’ garden looking down to Double Bay.1 The preliminary sketch for this is held by the State Library of New South Wales.2
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Martens recorded in his Account of Pictures entry for January 1859 a very similar and second version of the vista from Greenoaks’ garden, described as ‘View Double Bay done for Sir Daniel Cooper J. Levick Esq.’3 Sir Daniel Cooper was a very wealthy merchant and politician who had been living in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs at Rose Bay before moving in 1857 to Woollahra House, his vast new residence at Point Piper. He paid Martens’ highest price at the time for Double Bay – twenty-one pounds.
However, for some reason, the Double Bay painting was returned and later offered to another Sydney merchant, James Levick. Levick is noted in the Account of Pictures entry for 10 July 1861 as paying twenty pounds for Double Bay from Mr Mort’s, annotated by Martens as ‘previously done.’4 James Levick was another enthusiastic mid-19th century Sydney art collector with a private gallery. He had an eclectic collection, as indicated in the sale notice shortly before his death at Hunters Hill5, and had purchased several of Martens’ smaller pictures in the late 1840s, then two large works in 1861, including the Double Bay.
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This painting exemplifies these words and is a superb example of the artist’s work depicting one of Sydney’s most enchanting harbourside locations.
1. Now held in the collection of the National Trust of Australia (NSW). These works were donated in 1981 by the Misses Enid and Margaret Mort.
2. Conrad Martens, From Greenoaks T.S. Mort Esq. Jan. 23 1857, pencil, in View of Sydney and New South Wales (State Library of NSW, DG*G 18, f. 19)
3. Martens, Account of Pictures 1856 – 1878 (State Library of NSW, DL MS 143, f. 9)
4. ibid. (DL MS 143, f. 12)
5. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 6 August 1883, p. 9
6. ‘Turner and the origins of landscape painting in Australia’, by Sayers, A., in Lloyd, M. (ed.), Turner, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1996, p. 206
Elizabeth Ellis OAM
Emeritus Curator, Mitchell Library
State Library of NSW