sketcher, was the eldest daughter of Rev. Webster Whistler, rector of Hastings and Newtimber, Sussex, reputedly a connection of the later painter, James McNeil Whistler. At Newtimber on 23 October 1823, she married Thomas Smith; they had nine children. The Smiths arrived at Sydney in November 1830, Thomas having come to join his brother Henry Gilbert Smith in business. They lived at Glenrock, one of the first houses to be completed in the Darling Point area. Smith Brothers were large importers, agents and merchants and soon Thomas Whistler Smith (Penelope and Thomas’s son) was taken into the firm. When her husband died in 1842 and Thomas Whistler inherited Glenrock, he built the Dower House on part of the property (now Ascham School, Edgecliff) for his mother. She lived there until 1859 then returned to England, dying on 11 December 1866 at Plymouth, Devon.
Mrs Smith’s collection of pencil sketches (ML) of Sydney and the Illawarra district drawn between 1840 and 1848 includes sketches of Glenrock (one dated 6 May 1848 when it was still an unpretentious single-storeyed cottage) and two views (one dated 1846) of the two-storeyed Gothic gabled Dower House in its dense and romantic bushland setting (also painted by Conrad Martens ).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
