Reference: article in Australian Financial Review 30 July 2015 re Campbell watercolour (earliest known work, 1881) of Launceston at D & H Auction August 26, 2015. [’by Jane O'Sullivan: The earliest known work by colonial painter John Campbell is set to go under the hammer for the first time at Deutscher and Hackett's Fine Art sale in Sydney on August 26.
The oil painting View of Launceston is from 1881, and predates the next known work of Campbell's by eight years.
Shortly after it was painted, and when he was still living in Tasmania, Campbell raffled View of Launceston to raise money. It was won by a Ringarooma hotel owner and has remained largely out of sight since then, passing by descent and private sale to its current owner in Adelaide, who was unaware of its rarity. The work has never been exhibited or published.
Later in his life, the Scottish-born painter moved to Perth and became one of the most important West Australian painters of the late-19th and early-20th century. Today he is best known for his scenes of the city, particularly its breweries, and his subjects sit in stark contrast to the popular bush scenes that fuelled the nationalism of the day.
Campbell's work is not often seen at auction View of Launceston has been given an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. The highest price paid for his work to date was in 2005, when his 1909 painting View of Perth fetched $96,600 including a buyer's premium of 15 per cent with McKenzies Auctioneers.
By coincidence, another of Campbell's works, a watercolour of the Swan Brewery from 1903, has also been consigned to the Deutscher and Hackett sale by a different vendor. It carries an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000.’]
Catalogue entry:
51 JOHN CAMPBELL (1855 – 1924, Scottish/Australian)
VIEW OF LAUNCESTON, 1881
oil on canvas
71.5 x 106.5 cm
inscribed verso: VIEW OF LAUNCESTON /by John CAMPBELL / 1881. / VALUE £20 inscribed verso: WINDSOR & NEWTON, LONDON
$100,000 - 150,000
Provenance
Won in a raffle organized by the artist, Launceston, c.1881
Mrs. Herring, Ringarooma, Tasmania
Thence by descent
Mr. L. W. Cordell, Launceston
Thence by descent
Private collection, Launceston
Private collection, Adelaide
The recent discovery of this rare and important panoramic View of Launceston, 1881, sheds new light on John Campbell’s first years in Australia as well as adding an iconic painting to late colonial Australian art history.
Born in Scotland in 1855, there has been uncertainty as to when the artist arrived in Australia and where he spent his first years before eventually settling in Perth at the turn of the century. Until now the earliest known works by Campbell were painted in Brisbane between 1887 and 1889; a view of the Brisbane River from North of Victoria (Bridge), 1887 and Railway Hotel, Brisbane, 1889.
It is known that Campbell married Lucy Evans in Tasmania in 1883 and raised a family with some hardship. With the discovery of this early painting we can now assume that Campbell spent at least several years in the early 1880s residing in Tasmania, most likely in Launceston, before travelling to Brisbane by 1887. He is recorded as working in New South Wales and Sydney in 1895 and by the early 1900s had settled in Perth.
Painted in 1881, the decade of the Centenary, Campbell’s View of Launceston observes the ending of the Colonial era - the rugged rocky landscape and dilapidated wooden fence in the foreground, giving way to a fast growing and vibrant city with open pastures beyond. Soon after painting this work, Campbell raffled the painting in Launceston to raise funds for future endeavours. The artist had given a raffle ticket to Mrs Herring, owner of the hotel at Ringarooma in appreciation of ‘kindness he never forgot’. ‘ It won her the View of Launceston, a prize she treasured for life’1., which remained in the possession of the family for the next 100 years.
A retrospective exhibition of John Campbell (1855–1924) was held at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2003.
Dr. Eric Ratcliff, Architectural Historian, Launceston, has kindly provided the following information regarding the subject:
Launceston was founded in 1806 at the head of the estuary of the River Tamar, 65 kilometres from the sea, where the North and South Esk Rivers enter the tidewater. It is the third oldest established city in Australia, and by 1881, it was in size and importance the eighth city in the Australian Colonies, the entrepot and commercial centre of Northern Tasmania, with a rich agricultural and pastoral hinterland, exporting timber and servicing mines in the region.
The image is topographically accurate, but with some ar tistic condensation of the foreground and adjustment of the skyline. The viewpoint, looking north-east, is near the foot of what is now the Zig- Zag Reserve, named for the scenic path that climbs through the dolerite crags of the Cataract Gorge that appear in the foreground. The iron bridge, designed by the Irish railway engineer W. T. Doyne, prefabricated in Manchester and erected in 1862, spans the mouth of the Gorge of the South Esk, and shipping is shown in the old seaport in the mouth of the North Esk. The steamships with black and white funnels belonged to the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company, plying between Melbourne and Launceston; the largest, off Town Point, is recognisable as the SS Flinders. Beyond the bridge appears the Tamar Rowing Club boatshed of 1877. On the right, the gabled toll-keeper’s cottage appears above the slope, and below it can be seen the keeper’s shelter beside the road, near the lady with the parasol. Below that, in the left foreground are segments of the wooden fluming that carried water from the Cataract to Ritchie’s Mill, out of sight behind the hill. On the flats near the North Esk, the most prominent building is the red brick Commissariat Store of 1829; in 1881 it was the Victoria Barracks. On the hill behind the gabled cottage stands (left to right) Struan House, a merchant’s mansion of 1870, the old Army Barracks of 1821-26 that had become the Invalid Depot, and the old Court House (1837 and 1841). Beyond them can be seen the spires of St Andrew’s Kirk (1850), the taller Paterson Street Methodist Church (1866) and to the right of them is the town centre with Victoria Terrace on Windmill Hill beyond it. The background is the Eastern Tiers, with Mount Arthur prominent on the skyline, but the larger Mount Barrow much diminished, probably to enhance the composition.
1. ‘Old painting was prize in a raffle’, The Examiner, Launceston, 15 April 1969, p. 25
see also” 52 JOHN CAMPBELL (1855 – 1924, Scottish/Australian)
SWAN BREWERY, 1903
watercolour on paper
41.0 x 70.0 cm
signed and dated lower right: J. CAMPBELL PERTH. 1903
$25,000 - 35,000
Provenance
John Roberts collection, Perth
Corporate Collection, Perth
Related Works
Swan Brewery, Mounts Bay Road, 1903, illus. in Chapman, B., The Colonial Eye, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1979, cat. 177, p. 92
Publishing details: AFR
Location: 133