Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher and watercolourist, was active in New South Wales (NSW) between 1834 and 1858. She was the second daughter and fourth child of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787-1873), the Collector of Customs for NSW, and Elizabeth Gibbes (née Davis, circa 1790-1874). One of her younger sisters was the sketcher Fanny Gibbes .

Known also by her pet name of Minnie, Mary Gibbes was born in the borough town of Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, on 16 October 1817 and baptised at St Giles’ Parish Church the following January. At the time of her birth, Mary’s London-born father was serving as a brigade-major on the staff of England’s northern military district. Previously, Gibbes had fought in South America and the Low Countries during the Napoleonic Wars. His ancestors had been Barbados sugar planters during the 17th and 18th centuries although his natural father was rumoured to be Frederick, Duke of York (the second son of George III and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army). Mary’s mother came from a less bellicose environment; for she was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Davis, who had ministered to his flock in India before returning to England.

Mary and her seven siblings were raised indulgently by their parents, given the standards of the late Georgian era. From 1819 to 1827, they lived in and around the wealthy sugar port of Falmouth, Jamaica, where her father had taken up a government commission as Collector of Customs on a salary of approximately 1200 pounds a year. Mary spent an idyllic childhood at Falmouth, living mainly at a plantation house in the town’s immediate hinterland and enjoying, unwittingly of course, the tainted fruits of a slave-based economy. Jamaica’s tropical climate damaged the health of Mary’s father, however, and he was left with no choice other than to uproot his family and return to England, transferring (at a lower salary) to the customs’ collectorship at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Mary was aged nine or 10 at the time of her departure from the West Indies. She received a private education in England, as she had on Jamaica, and would mature into a lively, cultured and well-read young woman. As well as being able to sketch and paint, she could play several musical instruments and converse in French and other modern European languages. Mary also enjoyed dancing, flirting with handsome young men, and attending the theatre. Her parents were interested in the arts, too. Later, in Sydney, Colonel Gibbes would patronise artists such as William Nicholas and Frederick Garling and become acquainted with Conrad Martens and his daughter, Rebecca.

In 1833, Colonel Gibbes exchanged places with the Collector of Customs for the Colony of NSW and, on 19 April of the following year, Mary, her parents, and six of her brothers and sisters arrived in Sydney per the Resource . Colonel Gibbes’ new posting as the colonial government’s principal revenue-raiser paid a base salary of 1000 pounds per annum (plus a share of any profits raised from the sale of seized contraband) and merited a Crown nominee’s seat on the NSW Legislative Council. The Gibbes family dwelt initially in scenic Point Piper House, also called Henrietta Villa, on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour. Then, in 1843, the family moved north across the harbour to a new residence, Wotonga House, which Colonel Gibbes had erected to his own design on a five-acre site at the tip of Kirribilli Point. (Today, Wotonga forms the core structure of Admiralty House, the official Sydney home of Australia’s Governor-General.)

Since her arrival in Sydney, Mary had been an enthusiastic participant in the major events of the colony’s upper-class social calendar. She met a tall, dashing and erudite Irish settler named Terence Aubrey Murray (1810-1873) at a soiree held at Point Piper House in the late 1830s. They fell in love and were married at St James’ Anglican Church, Sydney, on 27 May 1843, after a protracted engagement. (The nuptials had been delayed by a disagreement over the size of Mary’s marriage settlement and differences arising from the bride and groom’s respective religious creeds: Mary was a Protestant and Murray a Catholic.) At the time of his marriage to Mary, Murray was a budding politician and an established pastoralist. His extensive rural landholdings centred on “Yarrowlumla” or “Yarralumla” (now the site of the Governor-General’s official establishment in the Australian Capital Territory) and Winderradeen, near Lake George, in the Collector Valley of NSW. Murray would go on to become, consecutively, a Member of Parliament, Chairman of Committees, Secretary for Lands and Works, the Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly and, finally, the President of the NSW Legislative Council. In 1869, he would be knighted for his services to the Parliament.

Following their wedding service, the Murrays honeymooned at Regentville House near Penrith, NSW. Regentville was the palatial country seat of the physician, agricultural pioneer and constitutional activist Sir John Jamison (1776-1844). Mary’s favourite brother, William John Gibbes (1815-1868), had been residing at Regentville since his wedding to Sir John’s daughter, Harriet, in 1837. (William was now Sir John’s right-hand man, effectively running the estate.) In June 1843, Mary’s husband was elected to the colonial legislature for the first time, representing the Counties of Murray, King and Georgiana. This development meant that he and Mary would not be able to travel to Yarralumla until October, and make it their maritial home. Murray used the interval to ensure that his manager planted an ornamental garden at Yarralumla and refurbished the homestead’s rooms in anticipation of Mary’s arrival.

The Murrays’ first child, Leila Alexandrina, was born at Yarralumla homestead in May 1844. On 5 August that year, Mary wrote at length to her friend Mary Wilson, a surgeon’s daughter from Braidwood, NSW. Her letter reads in part: 'Do you paint now? I finished the group which I commenced when you were here and I have sent to Sydney for some nice copies as I have taken rather a fancy to it, but I assure you I find I have not quite so much spare time since the arrival of my little Leila.’ Since William Nicholas did a joint watercolour portait of Mary and Leila dated 1846 (National Library of Australia), he was probably the Sydney artist that Mary commissioned to do the copies, which remain unlocated. Nicholas also executed a full-length watercolour likeness of Minnie prior to her marriage (National Library of Australia) as well as producing a locked-sized miniature portrait of Mary on ivory (private collection). Nicholas also drew Colonel Gibbes at least once during the 1840s and is likely to be the artist responsible for a pair of nuptial drawings of William and Harriet Gibbes dating from 1837 (private collection). He is known, too, to have done a group drawing of Mary Gibbes and her siblings which is now lost.

Mary found her daily existence at the isolated Yarralumla homestead to be dull and lonely after her gregarious way of life in Sydney. Not only did she miss her family but her husband was also absent from home on farming or political business for long periods. Sketching, reading and playing the piano were among Mary’s few diversions. Fortunately her sisters Fanny and Matilda were able to pay periodic visits to Yarralumla during the 1840s, while her youngest brother, Augustus, was sent from Sydney to act as her companion and assist with Yarralumla’s day-to-day administration. Mary’s incumbency at Yarralumla was blighted by the loss of three of her daughters as babies. They were Ayleen Elizabeth Murray, Constance Matilda Murray and Geraldine Bessie Jane Murray, and they died in 1847, 1851 and 1854 respectively. (Mary had been bedridden for most of her 1854 pregnancy.) Another daughter, Evelyn Fanny Matilda Murray – born September 1849 – was able to survive infancy, however, due to the timely availability of a wet nurse.

Mary’s health was clearly deteriorating. In 1855, she and Murray removed to Winderradeen in order to be nearer Sydney. It was at Winderradeen’s homestead that she gave birth to her final child, James Aubrey Gibbes Murray, in November 1857. But Mary’s body could not withstand the strain of parturition. She developed an internal infection and died, after enduring excruciating pain, of heart failure, on 2 January 1858. She was 40 years of age. Her husband buried her in an unmarked grave at Winderradeen. A year after Mary’s death, he sold Yarralumla to Augustus Gibbes (1828-1897), who had been managing the sheep station since the mid-1850s. Gibbes would occupy Yarralumla until 1881, when he sold it to Frederick Campbell for 40,000 pounds.

James Aubrey Gibbes Murray, Mary’s infant son, was raised for a short period by his maternal grandparents, who came to Yarralumla to live towards the end of 1859. The Colonel and Mrs Gibbes blamed Murray for Mary’s early death, which had happened far from what they considered to be proper medical care. In 1860, Murray’s son was returned to him. He had since married his children’s governess at Winderradeen. (Murray’s second wife, Agnes Edwards [1835-1891], a cousin of W.S. Gilbert, would produce two famous children: the Administrator of Papua, Sir Hubert Murray, and the most celebrated classical scholar of his generation, Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford University.) James, who preferred to be called by his middle name of Aubrey, grew up to be a gentle, introspective and rather unworldly adult. He worked as a public servant with the NSW Lands Department and married Marion Edith Lewis in Sydney in 1882. In later years, he moved to Victoria with his wife and children, dying at Ivanhoe in 1933. James’ elder sister, Leila Murray, was a fiercely independent spirit who never married. She travelled overseas with her uncle, Augustus Gibbes, during the 1880s before returning to NSW and acquiring a small country property. She died near Goulburn in 1901. Leila’s younger sister Evelyn Murray married a NSW squatter, Robert Morrison, in 1874. After her husband’s death, she sailed for England, where her daughter attended Girton College, Cambridge. Evelyn became a suffragette during the early 1900s and was arrested and jailed by the authorities on at least one occasion because of her protest actions outside the British Houses of Parliament. She died in London in 1928.

None of Mary Murray’s three children evinced any great artistic talent although her son was a good technical draughtsman. The Murray Family Papers are kept at the National Library of Australia. Included among them is a bound album or scrapbook containing sketches, other illustrations and handwritten notes by Mary Murray and others.

Writers:

Gibbes, Stephen

Date written:

2007

Last updated:

2011