Rare and important c.19th colour lithograph of Sydney Harbour, by Eugene Von Guerard (1811-1901) one of the most famous colonial artists.
The view depicts a broad sweep of landscape from Vaucluse Bay on the left to Watson’s Bay and Sydney Heads at the right, with the road to the South Head in the foreground. Despite partial screening by vegetation and buildings, the accuracy of his transcription of the view may be confirmed today from the vicinity of ‘Johnston’s Lookout’ in Vaucluse, the probable viewpoint for the artist’s preparatory drawing.
In ‘Sydney Heads‘, von Guerard celebrated with semi-religious reverence, the sublime beauty of the scene. Selecting an elevated viewpoint affording a panorama of the harbour and its surrounds, the artist aimed to inspire a sense of awe and wonder in the viewer by accentuating the vastness of the sky and by implication, suggesting the great expanses of the world beyond. Ref: Helen Campbell
‘Sydney Heads‘, is the only known Sydney subject by the artist, a product of von Guerard’s first and only excursion into New South Wales in November 1859, when he visited Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra region. The painting was worked up in his studio in Melbourne six years later, most likely on the basis of a preparatory drawing now in the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney. Von Guerard’s atmospheric rendering of this light-filled scene, together with his sensitive and precise depiction of topographical detail and human activity within a tightly controlled composition, makes ‘Sydney Heads’ one of his finest paintings.
From Guerard’s, Eugene von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes.
Guerard’s description of the view;
From the summit of a knoll on the roadside from Sydney to the narrow promontory known as the South Head, is visible the lovely prospect depicted by our artist. The miniature Bay of Vaucluse occupies the foreground to the left, and to the right Watson’s Bay exhibits its graceful curve. Travelling onwards, the eye rests for a moment upon the Dunbar Lighthouse beyond which, the narrow entrance to Port Jackson is sufficiently well defined while the bold headland which constitutes the rounding point of the entrance to the north harbour, bounds the view in that direction. Somewhat to the right of this rocky barrier, Manly Beach is faintly indicated. The road to the South Head is deservedly a favourite drive with the inhabitants of Sydney, and the stranger passing over it for the first time experiences a succession of demands upon his admiration, as each bend in the road discloses to him some new combination of sea and shore and sky, each lovelier than the last. Eugene von Guerard
