Port jackson painter biography sample

watercolourist and sketcher, is the name now used for an unidentified painter (or painters) – the most prolific of the First Fleet artists – who worked in Sydney from 1788 to the mid 1790s. Although warning that the Port Jackson Painter may not be a single person, he (or they) was given this name by Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific (Melbourne 1960) on the basis of stylistic similarities observable in a large number of watercolours contained in collections of drawings relating to the beginnings of settlement in Sydney: notably the Watling Collection and the Banks ms 34 in the British Museum (Natural History), a collection of 100 bird drawings (ML) and some drawings in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection (NLA).

On present evidence the most likely candidate for single authorship of the drawings would seem to be Henry Brewer , but this is not conclusive; another contender is Francis Fowkes .

Bernard Smith describes the Port Jackson Painter as working w