painter and clergyman, arrived at Van Diemen’s Land in 1841 and moved to Victoria in 1846. In 1851 he drew Flemington 1851, from the South East (pencil with white, ML). His sketch of Pentridge Stockade (1852, LT) is the first known view of this subsequently major prison. Kilmore Vicarage and School House (presumably his own parish) was drawn in 1853, Flemington from the N.W. in 1854 (both pencil, ML). Scraperboard and pencil views of Sydney Harbour (Josef Lebovic Gallery) also belong to the 1850s when he visited that city, while the initialled Melbourne: From Punt-Hill, South Yarra , another extremely fine drawing on scraperboard, is dated 5 July 1863.
Jarrett showed eight watercolours at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, giving his address as 80 Collins Street, Melbourne. Most were of Victorian scenery, such as Mount Wellington, Gippsland ; one was a Sydney scene, Port Jackson . Henry Gritten exhibited an oil painting that same year after Jarrett’s sketch of Reeves River and its Junction with the Gipp Land [sic] Lakes, Taken from Jenny’s Point . At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition Jarrett showed his oil painting Hobarton and the Derwent , dated 5 November 1868 (sold Christie’s (Australia), October 1989). In 1870 he became an inaugural member of the Victorian Academy of Arts and exhibited with it. His painting of the Gulf of Spezzia, one of two works included in the VAA’s seventh annual exhibition, 'comes very near [to] being a work of conspicuous merit’, stated the Sydney Mail critic: 'It is in handling the foreground that his technical skill falls short, as it is deficient in force’. His second offering, a view of Mount Snowden in Wales, shown again that year with the New South Wales Academy of Art, was also found weak in foreground interest.
As an 'amateur’ Melbourne artist, Jarrett showed an oil painting of Govett’s Leap, for sale at £25, in the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition and a view of The Head of Ullswater, England at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. His 'Hobart Town and the Derwent from Mt Nelson’, oil on canvas dated 5 Novr. 1868 and signed with monogram, a painting on loan to the TMAG from May 1990 to March 1991, was offered for sale at Sotheby’s The Colonial Sale , Hobart, 7 September 1997, cat.25 (col. ill.).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
