sketcher and lithographer, was a passenger on board the Caroline on a round-the-world voyage when the ship was wrecked off Flinders Island in 1849. He spent some time in Bass Strait, then travelled to Hobart Town, Launceston, George Town, Melbourne, Sydney (which he reached in September 1849) and Bathurst. He set sail from Sydney in December, reaching London in June 1850 after two years’ absence. In 1854 Hurst & Blackett published A Sketcher’s Tour round the World by Robert Elwee (sic) 'with illustrations from original drawings by the Author’. Elwes wrote in the preface:
This book is simply a record of travels undertaken for no purpose but my own amusement … The illustrations have been drawn by myself, from sketches made amidst the various scenes represented; and therefore, on myself rests the whole responsibility of the production.
Although he describes the places visited, he makes few references to his sketching until finally commenting: 'I amused myself very well till the day of sailing, in sketching the beautiful views about the harbour of Sydney, but altogether Australia is but a poor country for one in search of the picturesque’. The twenty-one illustrations are all tinted lithographs, put on stone by Elwes but finished by Hullmandel & Walton who specialised in tinting and white highlighting. Clifford Craig considers Hobarton one of the most technically proficient of the many views of the city taken from Bellerive with Mount Wellington in the distance. There are only two other Australian subjects: Hobarton, Gum Forest (Tasmania) and Gulf at the Weatherboard (Wentworth Falls, NSW).
It is possible that Elwes returned to Australia and visited the hitherto unfamiliar west in 1854 – if he was the Mr Elwes who acted in the amateur theatricals performed at the Perth Courthouse on 19-20 July. This Mr Elwes, a visitor to the colony, was a son of Charles Elwes of Great Billing, Northamptonshire, and the brother of Eleanora Caroline, the young second wife of the elderly governor of Western Australia, Charles Fitzgerald. Absence from England would certainly explain the distressing typographical error on the title page of his book.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
