Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, civil servant and land speculator, entered the British Commissariat Service (which organised the supply of goods and building materials for military garrisons overseas) at the age of 18 and was one of the clerks who supplied Wellington’s armies during the Peninsular campaigns. He received rapid promotion. In 1814 he attended the British Military Academy at Woolwich, studying under the well-known painter Thomas Sandby, who was also an architect and military draughtsman. Sandby’s influence on Bowerman can be seen in his wash drawings, in the architectural shading used in his treatment of windows and roofs, and in his precise line, fine detail and strong shadow. Constantly repeated details of cornice or brickwork and fine ruled lines of fences give the effect of embroidery in the work of both artists, and in Bowerman’s case create the impression of a rather obsessive personality.

Bowerman came to Sydney with his wife Marian in the Grenada , arriving on 23 January 1825. After a short term at Port Macquarie he was put in charge of the Commissariat Store at Parramatta. He finally served as deputy-assistant commissary-general at the Moreton Bay convict settlement from 1831 to 1835. He was a friend of the explorer Alan Cunningham who named Bowerman’s Plains, an area at Teviot Brook near today’s Boonah in Queensland, after him.

Bowerman made several drawings of the region (ML), including what is thought to be the earliest signed and dated view of Brisbane, a panoramic watercolour of the penal settlement taken from present South Brisbane (John Oxley Library). In 1835 Bowerman returned to Parramatta and resigned from the commissariat. His drawings of Parramatta and Moreton Bay were apparently used to accompany official reports, such as a report on the public buildings of Moreton Bay by William Looker .

After resigning from the civil service Bowerman received a substantial gratuity with which he purchased a block of land in central Sydney. In 1838 he went overland to Port Phillip with sheep, cattle and assigned convict servants and took up the Maiden Hills run near Lexton. After selling this to the Learmouth brothers in October 1839, Bowerman purchased a large block of land in the developing town of Melbourne where Collins Street now is. He paid 10 per cent deposit on the land in Melbourne’s first land auction and, to raise the balance, sailed for Sydney in the Britannia on 9 November 1839. He was never seen again. The Britannia 's tender was washed ashore but no bodies or other wreckage were ever recovered and on 4 August 1840 the Supreme Court of New South Wales finally declared Bowerman lost at sea. Had he lived he would have been a rich man, but his widow was not aware of his Melbourne land purchase and never paid the remaining 90 per cent. The land was declared forfeit, together with Bowerman’s deposit, and resold at a 400 per cent profit several years later.

Bowerman’s widow lived at their Parramatta home until her death. Their daughter, Kate Augusta, married David Grant Forbes, son of Chief Justice Sir Francis Forbes, in 1846. She and her husband established several sheep properties on the Darling Downs before he returned to New South Wales to become a district judge. The Bowermans’ only son, Francis Sydney, became a police magistrate at Leyburn, Queensland, until dismissed by the colonial secretary, Sir Arthur Wilcox Manning. In revenge, Francis Bowerman attacked Sir Arthur and tried to murder him. He served a long gaol sentence and committed suicide. His wife and children went to England to escape the notoriety of the trial and never returned; several of Henry Bowerman’s drawings appear to have been taken with them.

Writers:

De Vries-Evans, Susanna

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011