sketcher, was the eldest of the three children of Robert Clement Sconce, a naval secretary, and his first wife Sarah, née Knox. She grew up in Kent and at Malta, marrying Captain Richard Hanmer Bunbury in England in 1838. When their son Harry was a year old the family left for Port Phillip (Melbourne) in the Argyle , bringing a nurse for Harry. Sarah gave birth to her second son, Cecil, on the voyage out, her sister-in-law Elizabeth Catherine Sconce and a fellow passenger, Georgiana McCrae , assisting at the birth.
A month after arriving at Melbourne in March 1841 Sarah was making watercolour sketches of the Bunbury home in Brunswick Street, New Town (now Fitzroy). Most carry comments on the back and were obviously intended to be sent home. For instance, an unusually informal view of the Yard at the Back of our House at New Town—Port Phillip , dated April 1841, is annotated: 'You see I send you every thing. I did this for fun one day, because Lizzy [her sister-in-law] said she was sure I could draw something from the kitchen door. I beg leave to state that the vehicle is the Revd R.K. Sconce’s performance’ – a necessary dissociation as her soon-to-be-ordained brother had given the cart only one wheel.
In the middle of the year the Bunburys moved to Stanney on Darebin Creek where Sarah drew at least half a dozen views (La Trobe Library [LT], Mitchell Library). The most interesting, Front View of Stanney (February 1842, LT), shows her daughter pushing a wheelbarrow in front of their house. It is quite a competent and lively watercolour despite the annotation: 'Pray excuse Maggie’s feet being a couple of yards to the left of the wheelbarrow’. Her sepia drawing of the La Trobes’ prefabricated wooden vice-regal residence Jolimont, dated 1 July 1842 (LT), is also annotated apologetically: 'Could only manage one sitting, & am ashamed to send it, but it may give you a slight idea of our chief’s existence’.
In September 1842 the family moved to Williamstown where Captain Bunbury had been appointed harbour master. Sarah took a trip to Sydney in 1846 to see her brother and his family, visiting St Thomas’s Church of England at Mulgoa, near Penrith, where Robert Knox Sconce had been incumbent in 1842 43 before being appointed to Sydney. (He scandalously converted to Roman Catholicism in 1848.) Penrith Country Church -Australia 1846 (ML), a larger and more finished work than her sketchbook watercolours, is a sensitive rendering of the local landscape. Formerly in an album (mainly of photographs) compiled by her nephew Clement Sconce , it was obviously made as a souvenir for her brother. None of Sarah Bunbury’s work appears to have been seen outside the family circle during her lifetime.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
