A day’s picnic on Clark Island, 1870

A moment captured in time

Bring a Picnic

In September 1870, the artist exhibited this large-scale conversation piece in the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, staged at Prince Alfred Park to mark the centenary of Captain Cook’s discovery and naming of New South Wales. Carrying a price tag of £200, it was by far the most expensive art work shown. The judges and the critics were unimpressed: ‘grotesque little figures resembling gaudily bedecked marionettes’ was one assessment. The painting was a summary of colonial society: if you look carefully you can see workers and the wealthy, lovers and disapproving parents, fine clothes and poor, all compressed into the one image.

Montagu Scott (1835–1909), a newspaper illustrator and photographer, was bankrupt at the time and needed the money; it is highly likely that the painting was executed in haste, as a purely speculative revenue-raising venture.

The painting was acquired at the time of the Exhibition, or soon after, by pastoralist and politician Richard Hill (1810–1895), a member of the Legislative Assembly and a councillor of the Royal Agricultural Society, and remained in the Hill family until it was donated to the Library sixty years later.
Display item A day’s picnic on Clark Island, 1870

 

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