sketcher(?) and naval officer, was first lieutenant under Captain Joseph Short on board HMS Porpoise , the ship that brought Governor Willliam Bligh to Sydney in August 1806. Lieutenant Tetley wrote to Bligh in November, stating that 'in consequence of the ill-usage I have received from Captain Short, my peace of Mind is broke and my health much injured’. Short, in return, charged Tetley and the ship’s master Daniel Lye with insubordination. A court of inquiry resulted in the exoneration of Tetley and Lye, who returned to England in the Buffalo in January 1807 to give evidence at Short’s court martial. Short was honourably acquitted because of the prejudices of the court, Elizabeth Bligh heard from her English friends: 'the poor lieutenant was scarcely heard… and was brow-beat and talked to with severity’.
Possibly once in the collection of William Rashleigh, a volume of twelve umber monochrome watercolours (with blue and green ground colour) on paper watermarked 1804 has been attributed to Tetley (p.c. Guernsey). All show Australian Aborigines engaged in traditional pursuits: hunting, fishing, climbing trees, and so on. A similar set has one leaf watermarked 1798 (DG), while a third set stitched together to form a booklet and with no watermarked date is in the Mitchell Library (PXB 513). It used to be attributed to G.C. Jenner on the basis of a label inside the back cover and Jenner’s signature with the date 1822 on the inside front cover, but one of the 'Jenner’ drawings is inscribed in pencil on the back 'Lieut. Joseph Swabey Tetley’ and, of the twelve, only one is not duplicated in the Dixson Galleries set. All are exactly duplicated in the 'Rashleigh’ set, and it seems certain that Jenner was merely the owner of the booklet. The Mitchell Library has suggested that the Jenner set is the original, drawn from life at Botany Bay as stated on the inside back cover, the other two being tracings with a frame added to each picture.
The drawings are not stylistically comparable with work by known artists in Sydney at the time (the closest parallel seems to be with the ' Port Jackson Painter '), but whether Tetley did them during his otherwise eventful six months in Sydney remains unresolved. On the basis that he was their artist it has been suggested he might have provided the original drawings from which the English illustrator John Heaviside Clark prepared Field Sports &c. &c. of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales (London, 1813) though John Lewin has been more convincingly suggested as their original artist.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
