Design and Art Australia Online

Sketcher and newspaperman, was the son of Thomas Wittenoom of London and brother of John Burdett Wittenoom (1789-1855), the first clergyman appointed to WA. (All the drawings could have been by J.B. Wittenoom if the name on the prints was a mistake resulting from confusion between the maker and the messenger).

Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth is one of four watercolour sketches made about 1836-37 in Western Australia and subsequently engraved in London for Nathaniel Ogle’s influential book, The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants 1839 (London, 1839), when they were said to be after original sketches by C. D. Wittenoom Esq. The engraved version of this image was entitled Sketch of the Town of Perth, Western Australia and that was also the original title of the sketch. Both images show in considerable detail Perth’s public and private buildings, including the barracks and courthouse (which also served as the school and church), along the high side of the broad, sandy (unpaved) St George’s Terrace. The lavish vegetation in the watercolour is less obvious in the print because of the limitations of line engraving, but the plantings are virtually identical, especially the dominant gum tree overhanging the road in the right foreground. The little figures in the painting appear to represent local white settlers. The man in a clerical hat driving a horse and buggy is evidently the Rev. J. R. Wittenoom himself, the sole clergyman in WA at the time. He lived in St George’s Terrace in a substantial house facing Barrack Street, part of which can be glimpsed among the dense vegetation on the far right-hand side of the image. In the print, the incidental figures are markedly different; it is dotted with imaginary antipodean constructs chosen for their appeal to an English market. A bucolic dray has replaced the clergyman in his buggy and a group of Aborigines has been introduced.

Sketch of the Town of Perth, Western Australia (as it was then titled) was sold at Christie’s Melbourne auction on 3 May 1988 for a record A$93,500. The provenance was then given as 'Captain A.F. W. Fuller. [Then] Mrs. E. Fuller, her sale Sotheby’s, London, 30 Jan. 1969, lot 93’. Another watercolour and pencil sketch from the set, Sketch of the Town of Perth from Perth Water, Western Australia – the first known distant view of the town from Mount Eliza – was auctioned by Christie’s on 28 May 1987 as 'the property of a nobleman’. Its provenance was identical. C.D. Wittenoom’s view of Fremantle in the State Library of New South Wales was acquired from the Spencer-Jackson sale at the Decoration Company, Melbourne, on 28 October 1955. Its provenance was not stated, but it too could have come from Captain Fuller who bought and sold Australian art and may have once owned all four drawings used for Ogle’s book.

Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth has hung in the Art Gallery of Western Australia [AGWA] since 1989, on loan from the current owners soon after it was purchased. The engraving after it, long owned by the Art Gallery of WA, was exhibited in Barbara Chapman’s pioneering exhibition The Colonial Eye in 1978 and has regularly been hung in the gallery’s permanent display. It is believed to have never been exhibited outside WA despite being one of the two earliest white settler views of St George’s Terrace, the main street of Perth in Western Australia, then known as the Swan River Colony. C.D. Wittenoom sketched both in 1836-37. The other view, however (known only from a print), depicts the glorious Swan River panorama from the lower side of the street and is of limited architectural and townscape interest. The only other view of the street done in the early colonial period, a watercolour produced in 1850, also ignores the fledgling capital city for the distant scene. Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth is therefore a unique representation of the streetscape and some of the major buildings in Perth before convict labour was introduced in 1850 and changed the appearance of the town forever. It is an irreplaceable visual record of WA’s earliest free British settlement and, as such, has an important place in Australian history.

By the early 1830s the English press and public generally considered the Swan River Colony (WA) to be a failure – a poverty-stricken place built on sand with no obvious profit or potential. This sketch, along with two other watercolours of Perth and one view of Fremantle, all acknowledged as being by 'C.D. Wittenoom Esqr’, did much to dispel that misconception when reproduced as engravings in Nathaniel Ogle’s influential book, The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants 1839 (London, 1839). Three of the four originals are known, although only one – the view of the main street of Fremantle from the Round House signed 'C.D. Wittenoom’ – is in an Australian public collection (Dixson Gallery, State Library of NSW). It and Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth represent the colony’s urban development as seen in its two major towns, while the other two images emphasise the natural beauty of the place. Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth shows modest but solidly affluent public and private buildings reminiscent of those in an English village that would have appeared to be within the financial reach of most migrants. Only the vegetation is alien – and it looks more lush and fertile than anything at 'Home’, despite Perth’s sandy soil. (It is worth noting that the early settlers deliberately chose to retain native trees along the Terrace and complement them with exotics, as Rev. J.B. Wittenoom pointed out in 1832. The impressive results within a few years are obvious in the sketch.)

Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth is a perfect combination of the personal ('my house and garden in its setting’) and the political ('you too can live like this’). As such, it was probably the most successful piece of visual propaganda for colonial migration of all four views reproduced in Ogle’s book. Unlike the other views, it was not repeated. Generations of artists depicted the other three sites – Fremantle from the Round House and Perth from Mount Eliza were always the most popular WA subjects for painters, sketchers and photographers – yet no similar streetscape of St George’s Terrace in the early colonial period is known. Presumably the familiar English look of the town was definitively established by this image. Later Perth views either show the grandeur of individual buildings or the general growth of the town in distant views that emphasise the dramatic river site.

Sketch of St George’s Terrace is associated with the important pioneering Wittenoom family, particularly the Reverend John Burdett Wittenoom (1789-1855), first official chaplain to the Swan River Colony. Recently widowed, he arrived from England with his mother, sister and five sons on 30 January 1830, just over five months after Perth was founded. By 1832 he had erected 'the most substantial and best built house in the colony’ on St George’s Terrace and was enthusiastically working on his garden. His fifth son, Charles (always cited as the artist), left WA for school in England in 1837 – when the views must have been sent to London – and could have been no more than 13 years old when he made these competent drawings. An untrained boy is most unlikely to have composed such technically skilled, knowingly picturesque scenes intended for publication. The 'C.D. Wittenoom’ who signed the finished paintings and is acknowledged by the publishers as 'C.D. Wittenoom Esqr’ under the 1839 prints doesn’t fit Charles (who had no second name and was not 'esquire’). The artist was undoubtedly Charles Dirck Wittenoom, the brother – not the son – of the pioneer Anglican clergyman, who must have made a brief visit. In The Wittenoom Family in Western Australia (Perth, c.1963), R.E. Cranfield records no older Charles in the colony, but J.B. Wittenoom gave advice on brother Charles’s prospects as a Perth newspaper editor/ government printer in a letter written in 1832, included as an appendix in Cranfield’s book. C.D. appears to have arrived from Sydney in November 1836 and evidently departed with his nephew in April 1837. Such a brief visit explains why no later views exist by Wittenoom père or fils . An undated slight sketch of J.B. Wittenoom’s house in Perth, attributed to the father and dated 1832 (AGWA), was undoubtedly drawn in 1836-37 and also looks like the work of 'C.D. Wittenoom Esqr’.

Regardless of which Wittenoom did the sketches, the connection with the family is indisputable. As mentioned earlier, the small clerical figure in the buggy seen in the watercolour appears to be Rev. J.B. Wittenoom leaving his St George’s Terrace home. The view shows the Anglican clergyman’s home and work environment and emphasises the trees and gardens he so valued. Such family associations are one reason why the original sketch is superior to the print, but these will still be retained while the work continues to be held in private collection. The watercolour sketch shows Perth’s main street as it looked during the initial period of free British settlement (1829-50). Original views of early Western Australian settlement are rare; this one is unique.

Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth is also a seminal work in marking the beginnings of European art in Western Australia. The very few other works with this status include Lieutenant Dale’s panoramic view of Albany – which is also known only from a print, just as this image was for many years. Were Dale’s original watercolour ever to turn up at auction it would easily exceed all records for WA colonial art – just as Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth did in 1988. The significance of these foundational images to Western Australians can hardly be overestimated. This is not a great work of art when compared with paintings produced in England, Sydney or Tasmania in the mid-1830s, but it is an impressive achievement for a settlement only six years old. It was also effective as visual propaganda for migration to WA. The fact that such a modest view (when reproduced as a print) could counter numerous English cartoons and imaginary scenes denigrating the Swan River colony proves that the artist not only understood prevailing English topographical conventions but was also capable of using them to convert armchair travellers and potential migrants to a more favourable view of the place.

No other early view of St George’s Terrace shows the street in such detail. The two other views known by 1850 (when convict labour was imported and changed the look of the place forever) ignore the buildings and the streetscape in order to focus on the glorious view of the Swan River from the lower side of the Terrace. One is by C.D. Wittenoom; the other, dated 1850, is by Alexander Taylor.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989