landscape painter, illustrator, surveyor and architect, advertised as a surveyor of Jamison Street, Sydney, in January 1854. By May he was in partnership with Henry Haege as surveyors and civil engineers; the following year they were listed as architects. One of Roberts’s major artistic activities was 'improving’ the survey plans he and Haege provided for land auctioneers by adding topographical views of the areas up for subdivision. Two such views ('looking to the south-east, embodies a grand view of Botany Bay’ and 'looking to the North Head, is a view of the Railway and Petersham Station’) appear on a survey plan dated October 1854.
Roberts was closely associated with the Illustrated Sydney News during both its first (1853-1855) and second series (from 1863 until his death). He provided many topographical drawings, including a very large View of the City of Sydney and Port Jackson , used in January 1854 when the paper stated: 'Mr Roberts is a great observer of nature, and … endeavours to imitate what he sees. Many artists are satisfied with giving a general idea of the outline of a landscape and completing it in a peculiar style of their own, so much so indeed, that the picture might be in any part of the world, they make nature subservient to their style; in this case Mr Roberts makes his style subservient to nature, consequently we have a correct notion on inspecting his drawings, of Australian scenery’. As head of the art department for the first series, Roberts also 'tidied up’ drawings from less competent artists before the woodblocks were made. His contributions to the second series included The Old Figtree, near Wollongong (16 October 1867). Engravings after Roberts’s drawings also appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post , e.g. Panoramic View of Armidale, New South Wales , October 1866).
Several of Roberts’s drawings first published as views in the Illustrated Sydney News reappeared as advertisements. A picturesque landscape of a property near Goulburn (20 May 1854) was used to sell off lots on the estate, a view of the Rising Sun Hotel with a plan of its grounds to sell the hotel (29 April 1854), and a view of Burwood Villa to sell its subdivided land (surveyed by Haege and Roberts) on 13 May 1854. During the first series of the Illustrated Sydney News , Roberts seems to have been the last of the many proprietors in partnership with its longstanding engraver, printer and publisher, W.G. Mason . Although the final edition contains no indication of imminent demise, on 4 July 1855 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the paper was for sale, the late proprietors having 'retired from the business’. The following day Roberts was declared insolvent. His debts amounted to £310 6s 3d.
During his lifetime Roberts was best known as a painter of watercolour landscapes. View on the Clarence River, New South Wales was included in the New South Wales court at the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition and four of his paintings were shown posthumously at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, one being On the Barwon (probably now in Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong, Vic). Extant watercolours include Sydney Harbour scenes looking from and towards Neutral Bay (1853, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), Dangar Falls (1861, private collection), Sydney Harbour from the Wharf at Point Piper (1864, private collection) and St George’s Bridge, Barwon River, Queensland (1865, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.). Pencil sketches of the Sydney Botanical Gardens drawn in March 1866 are in the Mitchell Library.
Roberts’s The Gap was one of six pencil sketches photographed by Edwin Baldwin in March 1863; in December his watercolour Dangar Creek was exhibited at Baldwin’s Hunter Street photographic studio. The Sydney Morning Herald reported: 'we have never seen any water colour drawing produced in the colony that is at all equal to it. The grandly romantic scenery is handled with extraordinary ability, the colour is rich in the extreme, and the effect of light and shade disposed with true artistic knowledge’. Shortly afterwards Roberts and Baldwin jointly produced 'a well executed picture of the Champion Oarsmen of Australia’, Baldwin photographing the rowers 'in the act of starting for a race’ and Roberts painting 'a really well delineated view of Fort Macquarie, Government House, and that portion of the city extending from the National School to the Flagstaff Hill’ as background. Their composite image was lithographed by De Gruchy & Leigh of Wynyard Street. A letterhead by Roberts showing St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in flames in 1865 was engraved on wood by F. Cubitt .
Listed as a painter, architect and surveyor of Hordern Street, Newtown, in 1867, John R. Roberts died of 'dropsy’ on 30 June 1868. His obituary in the Illustrated Sydney News called him 'a painstaking landscape artist of no mean ability’.
Roberts’s work continued to appear in Town and Country Journal , e.g. 26 February 1870, presumably a posthumous reproduction.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
