sketcher and engraver, was convicted for an unspecified crime at Maidstone, Kent, in March 1804 and transported for seven years. He arrived at Sydney in July 1807 in the Duke of Portland and seems to have spent the next three years as an assigned servant in the Parramatta and Hawkesbury districts until his sentence expired in March 1812. That same month the first two prints engraved and printed in New South Wales were issued: his pair of copperplate views of Sydney from Bennelong Point, one looking back into the cove towards the main settlement and the other looking west, including Dawes Point. They cost 10s the pair and had been engraved by Slaeger after drawings by John Eyre . Absalom West was the publisher. The Sydney Gazette noted that they were 'fair specimens of the graphic art achieved by a person who had been many years out of his profession, under the disadvantage also of the impressions being taken off at a press constructed by a workman who had never before seen such a machine’.

In spite of these limitations the prints sold well, encouraging West to publish a series of twelve 12 × 18 inch (31 × 46 cm) plates titled Views in New South Wales , issued at Sydney on 13 January 1813 as a single set costing £3. For this, however, Slaeger’s earlier views were replaced by W. Preston 's more sombre and accurate engravings of Sydney, so that finally Slaeger engraved only two of the series: Native Camp near Cockle Bay, with a View of Parramatta River, Taken from Dawes Point and Parramatta from the North (Second Part) . This too was a great success, so much so that the price rose to £4 10s within a few weeks.

Less than a month later, in February 1813, West issued two more views (at 2 guineas the pair) and over the next eighteen months new engravings were added piecemeal. On 17 September 1814 West announced that the second series of twelve plates was now complete and he was offering the full set of twenty-four views (on twenty-two sheets) for £9. One of the full plates in the second series was engraved by Slaeger after his own drawing, A View of Part of the Town of Windsor, on the River Hawkesbury . The unsigned half-plates ending the series – The Burial of Baggara, a Native of New South Wales, and Remarks Thereon , The Blue Mountain Pheasant [lyre bird] , Campbell & Co.'s Mercantile House, Sydney and Red House Farm, Windsor – were possibly also drawn and engraved by Slaeger. The Rienits suggest that this was the case, but Wantrup believes they were probably by Preston after Eyre. Bonyhady suggests that West, to avoid having to pay free-market rates once Slaeger received his ticket of leave, replaced him with Preston for most work. Slaeger’s style is carefully detailed in the English topographical print manner and he seems to have a lively quality absent in Preston, perhaps at least partly due to his far more innocent understanding of the rules of perspective.

Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011