Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher and traveller, left England with his son on 13 June 1841, bound for New South Wales. Their ship, the Lady Kennaway , entered Sydney Heads on 12 October. Hood spent some time in Sydney and toured country areas, in particular visiting another son who had a station at Mount Conobolas. He left Sydney alone on 16 March 1842, returning to England by way of the East. There he settled comfortably back into life at his home in Stoneridge, Berkshire, which he and his son had left almost a year previously 'with somewhat heavy hearts’.

Hood published an account of his travels, Australia and the East, a Journal Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales in an Emigrant Ship with a Residence of Some Months in Sydney and the Bush in the Years 1841 and 1842 (London 1843). A copy inscribed to 'James Lowe Hood from his affecte father, the author 1843’ (Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) is interleaved with pen, pencil and watercolour sketches taken on his travels. They include views of Sydney Heads, Government House and stables, country inns, residences where Hood stayed, and landscapes. There are monotone watercolour drawings of an emu, of Sandy Wentworth King of Boree and, on the reverse, One of the Queens of Boree! in her Opossum Cloak and her Child on her Back . A view of Sydney is inscribed verso, 'a Bird’s Eye View of Sydney taken in a few minutes on the morning I sailed—from the Deck of the William Sharples —it is extremely like—But only shows a very small part of the Town, which lies to the South out of sight’. The only signed work in the collection, a pencil illustration of Chief Hindoo Temple in Bombay, appears to be initialled A.H. (perhaps the son); the rest are doubtless by John.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011