Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, soldier, explorer, civil servant and ornithologist, was born in India, son of a judge at Bengal. He lived with relatives in England from the age of five, finishing his education at Harrow. Commissioned ensign in 1813, he served in the Peninsular War, with the army of occupation in France (1815-18) and in Ireland. Writing from Ireland to his cousin in 1820, Sturt reported drawing 'a most beautiful portrait’ of the Duke of Wellington which had made him 'much favoured at headquarters’, as well as a caricature of the brigade-major which had 'picked up a deuce of a dust’ when engraved and put in 'every ginger-bread shop in Dublin’.

Sturt came to Sydney in 1827 as a captain in his regiment. The following year he undertook an exploring expedition to trace the course of the Macquarie River. He sketched the main outlines of the northern river system, including the Bogan and the Castlereagh, and discovered the Darling near its junction with the Bogan. In the summer of 1829-30 he went down the Murrumbidgee River and discovered its junction with the Murray and that of the Murray with the Darling. He then proceeded down the Murray to Lake Alexandrina and the river mouth before returning to his base.

He served on Norfolk Island for about a year from August 1830, then was given leave because he was going blind. At the end of 1831 he returned to England, where his sight responded to medical treatment and where he published Two Expeditions into the Interior of South Australia (2 vols, London 1833). Some of the illustrations were made from his sketches. In 1834 he sold his commission, received a grant of land and married. The next year he returned to Sydney, located his grant near the present site of Canberra and bought more land at Mittagong, but financial difficulties prompted him to sell out in 1838 and overland cattle to South Australia. Earlier in the year he had been visited by the noted natural historian John Gould , 'who greatly admired Sturt’s large original collection of Australian Psittacidae in watercolour, for which he offered on the spot a large sum’, but Sturt would not part with the portfolio at any price. The collection was later stolen together with early journals and diaries, losses which obsessed him in his last years.

Governor Gawler offered Sturt the position of surveyor-general of South Australia in November 1838 and he moved to Adelaide with his family. The next year Lieutenant Frome arrived with an official London commission for the same position and Sturt was appointed assistant-commissioner for lands. He became registrar-general in 1842. In August 1843 he set out on a journey to Central Australia in an endeavour to discover an 'inland sea’. The party passed the Barrier Ranges and, despite great difficulties in torrid inhospitable country, discovered and crossed Sturt’s Sandy Desert and reached latitude 24o 30’ south but found neither an inland sea nor any mountain range. He did not reach Adelaide again until January 1846, when he was suffering badly from scurvy. On his recovery, he again returned to England.

Here he received a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society and published his Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia (2 vols, London 1849). He used some of his sketches to illustrate the book. He also lent his notebook to John Michael Skipper , who worked up some of these 'tiny and delicate sketches in pencil and water-colour’. Back at Adelaide in 1849 Sturt was appointed colonial secretary but had to retire after two years, again because of failing eyesight. Awarded a pension, he returned to England and lived quietly at Cheltenham until he died in 1869, just before he could receive the knighthood about to be conferred upon him.

Most of Sturt’s surviving Australian art work consists of pencil and watercolour sketches and maps made on his exploring expeditions. Some are in notebooks and pocket books in the British Library, Rhodes House Library and Mitchell Library. Rhodes House Library also holds a collection of gouaches on panels developed from sketches made on his expeditions. They include a view of an Aboriginal camp, probably in the Murray River region (c. 1829-30), Possum Hunt, Murrumbidgee Region, December 1829 and a view of the explorers’ camp on the Murrumbidgee River in December 1829. Two portraits of Sturt painted by John Michael Crossland in the 1850s are in the Art Gallery of South Australia and there is another in the National Portrait Gallery, London. An unidentified portrait of a much more youthful surveyor and explorer painted by Benjamin Clayton in the early 1830s may also be of Sturt.

Writers:

Shaw, A. G. L.

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011