Benjamin Warwick

Also known as B. Warwick
  • Artist (Painter)
Watercolour painter made a number of botanical watercolour drawings in 1863 65, mainly of plants in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. A further nine watercolours by Warwick are of views in New South Wales and Victoria.

watercolour painter, made a number of botanical watercolour drawings in 1863 65, mainly of plants in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Twenty of these, each measuring approximately 15 × 11 inches (38 × 28 cm), are included in an album prefaced by a title page with a decorated border (Mitchell Library [ML]). Most have titles and three are dated 1864 and signed 'B. Warwick, Newcastle’. The fifteen following botanical drawings, of smaller size, include specimens from New South Wales, New Zealand, China, Brazil and South Europe.

A further nine watercolours by Warwick (also ML) are of views in New South Wales and Victoria. These are prefaced by a title-page bearing the name of Benjamin Warwick, above which appears the coat of arms of the Warwicks of Cumberland, England. The Sydney views include Garden Island (carrying dual dates of 1865 and 1866) and Lower South-Head Lighthouse (1866). A highly coloured, crudely drawn rural scene titled Bush Life in New South Wales. The Arrival of the Mail (1866) shows a group of travellers in front of the Royal Hotel, a milestone in the foreground indicating that this is 290 miles from Sydney. Warwick’s name appears over the doorway so he may have been its proprietor. Other Sydney views were made in 1867, while The Elephant Rock, Cape Schanck, Victoria is dated 10 December 1868. The final view, of La Perouse’s monument at Botany Bay with two figures leaning against the wall at the base, is dated May 1870.

All Warwick’s known works were purchased by a dealer at a Sotheby’s auction at Sydney in the 1960s and have since been dispersed. Monument to the Memory of Burke and Wills (1868) and several other Victorian and New South Wales views appeared in Australian salerooms in 1974 and 1978. The Mitchell Library holds photographs of others, as well as another Botany Bay, Tomb of the First European Who Died in Australia [P รจ re Le Receveur] (1867, w/c). They reveal Warwick’s grasp of figure drawing to be uniformly poor and his knowledge of perspective slight; trees executed with a fluid line are not always convincingly anchored to the ground. Nevertheless, his drawings are not without charm.

Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011