• Title
  [Panoramic view of Sydney Harbour and the city skyline], 1894 / painted by Arthur Streeton
• Creator
  Arthur Streeton, Sir, 1867-1943
• Call number
  ML 1513
  Status: On display – Paintings from the Collection, Recent Acquisitions, Room 1, North Wall, no. 306
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  1894
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Paintings
• Reference code
  9623612
• Physical Description
  1 painting - 15.5 x 70 cm. - oil
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) was one of Australia’s best known artists, and a key figure in the Australian Impressionist school. Streeton played with the panel “slice” idea from the early 1890s. All these panels from the 1890s and 1907 measure much around 17 x 65 cm. It was a formula unique to Streeton and he painted at least twelve of these panels around the Harbour in the mid-1890s, with the majority of them focused on the stretch of the Harbour from Mosman (often incorporating Cremorne in the view) to Circular Quay. By repurposing long, thin milliner’s or draper’s boards he found a surface which was ideally suited to capturing a moment, focusing on slices, or snippets, of Harbour views.
  
  Source:
  Library correspondence file.
• Collection history
  Emily Cecelia Bowden-Smith purchased painting from Streeton in 1894. By descent when purchased by Trevor Bussell Fine Art Gallery, 1986. Trevor Bussell Fine Art Gallery to current vendor, 1987.
• Scope and Content
  An oil painting on drapers panel of a view of Sydney Harbour from a high vantage point on Curraghbeena Point, looking out across Cremorne Point, over Fort Denison, with the city and the Botanic Gardens in the background.
• Access Conditions
  
  Access via appointment
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Creator died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Description source
  
  Untitled. Titled by cataloguer.
• General note
  
  This painting was given by Emily Cecelia Bowden-Smith, as a gift for her husband, Admiral Nathaniel Bowden-Smith, in 1894, who was Commander of the Australian Fleet between 1892 and 1894. She wanted to give him something as a souvenir of their time in Sydney, which was about to conclude. Mrs Bowden-Smith displayed it in the drawing room at a function she gave at Admiralty House on 7 December 1894: the Telegraph reported on 8 December 1894 (p.10) that “Mr Streeton’s excellent picture of Sydney, painted expressly for our hosts as a souvenir of their (as they are good enough to say) two happy years in Australia.” The Telegraph described it as “a living, speaking picture, full of that fire which is so peculiarly Australian…”
  
  Source:
  Library correspondence file.
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Signed and dated lower right: "Streeton / .94".
  On the reverse is a label: “N.B.S from E.C. B-S, 10th November 1894 in remembrance of two happy years in Sydney”.
  [N.B.S. for Nathaniel Bowden-Smith; E.C. B-S for Emily Cecelia Bowden-Smith.]
  
  Two labels on back of frame:
  Exhibited 'Arthur Streeton and the Australian Coast'. 11 December 2004-6 March 2005. Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria.
  Justin Miller Art. Spring Exhibition, September-December 2018. Paddington, NSW.
• Subject
  Shipping--New South Wales--Sydney Harbour.
  
• Place
  Fort Denison (Sydney, N.S.W.)
  Cremorne Point (N.S.W.)
  Sydney Harbour (N.S.W.)--Pictorial works.
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE15526616

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