Mount Nelson, near Hobart Town from near Mulgrave Battery, Van Diemens Land.

View looking south from Battery Point along Sandy Bay to Mount Nelson. Mulgrave Battery was put in place in 1818 on the southern side of the point as part of Hobart’s coastal defenses. Joseph Lycett, an artist, was convicted of forgery in 1811 and transported to New South Wales. He was given his ticket-of-leave soon after arriving and began working as a clerk in the police office but was arrested again for forgery. He was sent to the notorious penal settlement of Newcastle and pardoned in 1821 after Governor Macquarie, who had taken an interest in Lycett, sent three of his drawings, including a large view of Sydney, to then Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst. Lycett returned to England armed with a portfolio of colonial views which he published in his Views in Australia: or, New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land delineated in Fifty Views in 1825, dedicated to the Earl of Bathurst. Lycett is acknowledged as being one of the most important colonial artists to record the early progress of the colony.