sketcher, naval officer and governor, was born in Launceston, Cornwall (UK), on 23 April 1758, son of Philip King, a draper. King sailed with the First Fleet to Botany Bay as second lieutenant in the Sirius , later transferring to the Supply under Captain Arthur Phillip. In February 1788 he was appointed superintendent and commandant of Norfolk Island and sent to establish a settlement there. In March 1790 Phillip sent him to England as his emissary. He returned to New South Wales the following year in the Gorgon as lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island. Before leaving England, King married Anna Josepha Coombe. Six weeks after their arrival on Norfolk Island she gave birth to a son, Phillip Parker , the first of their five children and his only legitimate son. He and the convict Ann Innett, with whom he had lived during his previous Norfolk Island appointment, had had two sons, Norfolk and Sydney; they formed part of the King household. On the grounds of ill-health, King returned to England in 1796. He came back in 1800 as governor of New South Wales, succeeding John Hunter . William Bligh took over in August 1806 and the Kings sailed for England in 1807. Philip Gidley died in London on 3 September 1808.
No signed drawings are known but it seems certain that King sketched. Attributed originals, however, are mostly quite crude. They include a pen, ink and wash View of the Entrance of Port Jackson Looking down the Harbour from Maskelyne’s [Dawes] Point (private collection) (with the title in King’s hand), a pen and wash view of Sydney Cove (c.1800, Mitchell Library [ML]) which shows the incomplete drawing-room at Government House, Sydney, and a pen, ink and wash view of Sydney in 1802 (Dixson Galleries). In addition, two ink drawings attributed to Governor King were lent by his namesake grandson, Philip Gidley King , to the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. One was 'a view of Sydney Cove, looking from the present site of the city, and showing the flagstaff which once occupied the position of the Macquarie Lighthouse, and also showing Sirius Cove (now Mossman’s Bay) with the ship Sirius lying there’.
The La Trobe Library holds a crude drawing of Norfolk Island also attributed to King by his descendants, which appears to have been copied from a sketch by William Neate Chapman . Another copy (1804, ML), however, is by King’s son Phillip Parker , done when aged about 13, perhaps the more likely artist. In particular, four fluent watercolours of Aborigines in the Banks Papers (ML) have been attributed to King on the basis that one of them appears to be the original sketch for A Native Family of New South Wales , an engraving by the legendary English painter and engraver William Blake for Hunter’s An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island … (London 1793), which is inscribed 'From a sketch by Governor King’. But, as the Rienits point out, the assured line of the Aboriginal watercolours reproduced by Blake is stylistically inconsistent with the poor draughtsmanship of the topographical works and Bernard Smith has suggested that they are more likely to have been redrawn by a professional English artist (after King’s lost rough sketches). The practice of making finished drawings for the engraver to work from when making his plates was normal at the time.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
