watercolour painter, signed an oil on canvas view of the Mosman foreshores (sold Sotheby’s 28 August 2001, lot 266, formerly Cowlishaw collection) inscribed verso: 'Oil painting from above Watson’s Bay showing the foreshores of Mosman from Middle Head to Cremorne Point. The Clifton Gardens Hotel may be noted at Chowder Bay. The date of this painting is about 1860.’ The view is thought to show the first telegraph poles erected in Sydney. Presumably the 'Halsted’ who executed a watercolour view of Circular Quay (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), which must date from after April 1862 when the sea wall at Fort Macquarie was commenced, is the same person. Another watercolour signed 'Halsted’, Johnsons [sic] Bay, Balmain (Mitchell Library, Sydney), painted from 14 Datchett Street, Balmain East, and an oil, Sydney Harbour from South Head Road, are dated to the late 1860s, while views of Kiama and nearby Bombo Cemetery on the south coast of NSW signed 'G.F. Halsted’ (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), are thought to be of the 1870s. Nothing is known of the artist’s background, but he may have been a son of Captain George A. Halsted RN whose sketchbook of English views (c.1842-59) is in the Mitchell Library. The library also has three pencil gold-diggings scenes initialled 'G.F.H.’. One is dated 1852, which perhaps indicates when George F. Halstead arrived in the colony.
In 1873 G.F. Halsted showed watercolour paintings with the NSW Academy of Arts, including 'a pleasing little portrait of a pretty girl’ and a view of 'the forty-gun frigate off Malta’, the latter being judged his best picture. Exhibits shown that year with the Agricultural Society of NSW included Sydney Harbour from the Public Library, Views on Rushcutter’s Bay from Darling Point, a portrait, and Forty-gun Frigate off Malta.
Halsted exhibited with the Art Society of NSW from its first exhibition in December 1880, when he showed views of Middle Harbour, Bondi, the Blue Mountains, Azaleas in the Botanical Gardens and Bush Scene. The Sydney Morning Herald considered the best to be his painting of Bondi, which showed 'a couple of men dragging some wreckage from the undertow of a giant breaker’, adding 'The likeness between it and one of Mr Carse’s [q.v.] is curiously strong’. The following year Halsted’s Sunset on George’s River was singled out for its vantage point, its very good perspective and its 'mellow and tender’ colouring. His landscape paintings, bathed in either bright or highly atmospheric romantic light and treated in a detailed naturalistic manner, continued to be admired for their 'rich natural beauty’.
Undated examples signed 'G.F. Halsted’ occasionally appear on the art market (e.g. Lane Cove River, Hunter’s Hill, water colour) as do similar works apparently signed 'F. Halsted’ (The Foreshores of Mosman, oil, and South Head River, Hunters Hill, water colour) who is possibly the same artist. The Art Gallery of New South Wales had acquired a work by G.F. Halsted before 1883, when Greenwood and Stephen labelled him in 'an accurate and careful draughtsman whose views of coast scenery have been very much admired’, but the painting has since been deaccessioned.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
