Dredging the Yarra

An American artist, Schell was brought out to produce views for this series which was made to mark 100 years of Australia’s settlement. He was active in Australia from 1886-1889. This engraving is from the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia which was the most ambitious publishing venture in Australian history up to the 1900’s. It was conceived and financed by American publishers under the name of the Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co Limited, Sydney and Melbourne. Its ambitious aims of using the best artists, the best paper, the finest printing engraving techniques and for it to be the most comprehensive survey of Australia’s colonial history ensured that it inevitably was doomed to be a financial failure. The legacy that it left on the other hand was some of the finest engravings and maps printed in Australia in the C19th.