Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher and naval officer, was on board HMS Harrier at Sydney in 1861 and 1862, having come from Rio de Janeiro. His ship returned to South America after voyaging around the South Pacific. Scrivener sketched in pencil or watercolour over pencil the obligatory sites for a naval visitor: Government House, Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney Harbour from Garden Island and the entrance to Port Jackson. The location and details of Government House are topographically and architecturally incorrect, but his view is full of neatly drawn ships in the harbour and there are a couple of sailors from the Harrier on the foreground shore. En route he drew views of Phillip Island, the small outcrop off Norfolk Island, and other islands in the Pacific. New Zealand was visited and sketched between the two Sydney visits.

The Harrier was again serving in South America and Pacific waters in 1878-81 and Scrivener produced pencil and watercolour views of Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico and Panama, some heightened with white. These include Bridge on Transandean Railway , Railway through Andes near Lima , Mrs Meggs House near Callao (Peru), Acapulco Harbour (Mexico) and Eastern Entrance to Panama Canal (Panama), all rather more competent sketchbook works. Harbour and mountain views of Tahiti are dated 1880 but the ship obviously did not revisit Australia.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011