[View of Sydney Harbour] / Conrad Martens

DG XV*/Sp Coll/Martens/4

fonds

1835

Graphic Materials, Drawings

404678

1 drawing - 62 x 81 cm in frame - watercolour and pencil, with scraping-out

Out of copyright:
Please acknowledge:: Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales

Pencil drawing (from a slightly different position), "Sandy Bay in Port Jackson Harbour", title lower right, 19.3 x 29.2 cm, inscribed lower edge in a later hand (R.T. Carter?) "I think Rose Bay from Car[r]ara", bequeathed by Sir William Dixson, 1952, DL PX 24, f. 22

One of three 1835 Harbour watercolours, see also "View of Sydney Harbour", 1835, DL Pg 53. They were Martens' first notable successes, with ten different versions, 1835--40, including one for Robert Mackenzie, 1836, now in NGV, see Clemente, pp. 48--9. A large oil, "Sydney from above Sandy Bay", bought by Robert Campbell on 3 June 1840 for 30 guineas, is almost certainly the work, 61.4 x 90.2 cm, offered at Clune Galleries, Sydney, 1967, now in the Elders IXL Collection. A later version was "View from Milk Beach J. Fisher Esq. 15.15.0 16th Sept. [1853]".
The vantage point from Rose Bay (Martens' "Sandy Bay") is near Hermit Bay and Milk Beach beneath The Hermitage and Strickland House (formerly Carrara), looking towards Henrietta Villa on Point Piper. In the middle distance is Clark Island, above it, left, St James Church spire, then Garden Island (the hump, centre), and Pinchgut still a rocky outcrop on the right. The pictures have variations in foreground figures.
Sandy (Rose) Bay does not appear on any nineteenth-century maps or charts of Port Jackson, and is not to be confused with another Sandy Bay, now called Athol Bay, near Taronga Zoo, on Reuss and Browne's Map of... Sydney and Environs ..., 1856.
Exhibited at the Conrad Martens Centenary Exhibition, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 1978, cat. 17.
Illustrated in 'Out of the past', by Daniel Thomas, in Art and Australia, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1963, p. 40.

Signed and dated lower right: 'C. Martens 1835'. Former title 'Sydney Harbour from Rose Bay' from old mount label.