sketcher, was the third of the six daughters of John Blaxland and Harriott, née de Marquet. In 1837, when Emily Manning was visiting the Blaxland home, Newington, near Parramatta, New South Wales, she mentioned that Jane sketched, commenting that she, Jane and Louisa Blaxland went on sketching excursions in a 'little low chariot’ drawn by a pony. Manning commented of her hosts: 'Considering that I was brought up in the old world and they in the new, I have felt more in my element at Newington than since I have been in the colony’. G.T.W.B. Boyes admired the 'beauteous bevy’ of Blaxland daughters when he visited Newington in April 1824, considering them 'the best informed girls I have met with [in] a long time and are certainly rich in all useful knowledge’, despite the lamentations of 'a beautiful creature of eighteen’ (presumably Jane) 'deploring the misfortune in not having the benefit of an English education’.
A trip to England was being planned for Jane in 1841 in an attempt to improve her failing health and Emily Manning wrote to her mother: 'her enthusiasm for all that is beautiful in art and nature and her thirst for information will rekindle, when surrounded by so much to astonish and delight, and it will astonish you when you reflect that she has found her mind herself, almost entirely among people who have had no other ideas for years than those suggested by rumours of the scab having reached their sheep or their cattle having been stolen or strayed’. Jane died on 15 March 1843 at Bromley, Kent, just as she was about to return home after her British and European travels. No sketches have been identified, although unsigned sketches in the family papers may be by her and/or her sisters.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
