Design and Art Australia Online

painter, sketcher, comic illustrator, amateur photographer and surveyor, was born in London on 5 June 1827, son of James Henderson and Catherine, née Black, and a brother of Euphemia Henderson . The family had large landholdings on the Isle of Guernsey. John Black Henderson studied art in Edinburgh and architecture in London (under Gilbert Scott). Migrating in 1851, he worked on the Ballarat goldfields for several months then joined the Victorian Government Survey Office in Melbourne. On one of his first surveying trips – to the Goulburn River – Henderson was accompanied by Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh, who later described their first night out when they pitched their tent under a big gum-tree and 'new-chum-like, we made our fire at the foot of the tree’. The burnt-through tree fell on the tent in the early hours of the morning and Henderson 'who was very clever with his pen made a graphic sketch of the scene, which I have lost’. Fetherstonhaugh also remarks that Henderson was 'very musical and used to vamp on the piano and sing amusing songs’.

Moore states that Henderson’s retrospective Eureka Stockade Riot, Ballarat, 1854 (watercolour, Dixson Galleries [DG]) was 'painted from sketches done on the spot a few hours after the event, the dress of the miners and the uniforms of the soldiers being accurate’. Although this worked-up, version has assumed the role of a history painting his surviving sketches made on the diggings (La Trobe) are simply rough impressions of goldfields’ life. A painting Rushcutters Bay [Sydney], initialled 'JBH’ and dated 1860, was offered at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 30 April 2002, lot 182 (est. $4,000-6,000 not ill.), as his work. Henderson exhibited oil and watercolour landscape paintings at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, including Falls on Bunyarramite Creek and Haystack Rock, Western Port Bay , from Phillip Island (where his two sisters lived) and from St Kilda.

A founder member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, Henderson showed six landscapes in its inaugural exhibition and two at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. Three sketches offered for sale in 1979 were Darby Flat and River (ink and wash), Big and Little Nobby, Phillip Island, Seal Rocks in the Distance (w/c) and a comic sketch, Returning from the Melbourne Races, March 1852 (w/c and ink). Tidal River near Yanakie (c.1860, ink and grey wash) is in the Ballarat Fine Arts Gallery, and Sandy Point, Western Port (c.1860, oil) in the La Trobe Library. Also an amateur photographer, Henderson photographed Sheepwashing at Sunville Station, South Gippsland , reproduced in Henry Peck’s Memoirs of a Stockman (Melbourne 1942). (Sunville Station was close to the McHaffies’ Yanakie property.)

By 1877 Henderson was living in Sydney. He worked in the Colonial Architect’s Office until 1903. A watercolour and gouache on paper, Argyle Street, Sydney (Sotheby’s Melb November 1998, lot 77), was a gift from Sir Henry Parkes to Isabella Murray Parkes, wife of the architect Varney Parkes with whom Henderson would have worked in the Col. Architect’s office. At first the family lived in the seaside suburb of Coogee, but after the death of their daughter in an accident on the beach John Black Henderson and his wife moved to Eastwood. In 1906 Henderson began to go blind. He died in July 1918 and was buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde.

John Black Henderson has often been confused with John Baillie Henderson (1836-1921), a surveyor and hydraulic engineer who came to Victoria in 1861. It was John Black Henderson who did the separately issued lithograph after Anniversary Regatta, Sydney Harbour – Picnic at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair , an undated oil on canvas painting by an unknown artist (DG, presented by Sir William Dixson in 1935). Ellis notes (p.7) that the painting was also reproduced in the Sydney Mail of 30 January 1897 (when it was in the hands of John C. Lovell, 'furniture, warehousemen and fine art dealers’ of George Street, Sydney) and in the Anchor of 5 October 1911. There is some speculation that it could be much later than is generally believed (ie. c.1855) and be Alfred Clint 's 'pretty and well-painted scene’ Near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair , shown in an 1890 art exhibition. Mahood notes that Clint 'excelled in robust, crowded scenes’, which it certainly is.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011