The scene depicted in Friend’s version shows the interior of Sydney’s First Government House (now the site of the Museum of Sydney) facing onto Bligh Street. A room, replete with furnishings, is littered with miniature allegorical details; a four poster bed and patterned floor covering, a couple of framed pictures hanging on the wall including a double hemisphere map. Through the window and door a vista sweeps down onto Sydney Cove, the present site of Circular Quay, and across to The Rocks. A uniformed officer, arms raised in the act of issuing orders, stands in the doorway as two red-coated NSW Corpsmen (one holding a rifle) charge across the room to wrestle a man in shirtsleeves (Bligh) out from under the bed. 

This decorative panel painting presents a colourful reimagining of Australia’s one and only military coup, some 160 years after the event. Based on the original colonial watercolour held in the Mitchell Library, it was created by Donald Friend, a Sydney-born painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, illustrator, director and writer. Friend completed a number of similar works around this time focusing on aspects of Australian history including a 10 panel 'Bennelong' series (1964) for the Sydney Opera House.

As a young artist, studying the collections of Sydney’s local cultural institutions, Donald Friend would certainly have been aware of the State Library’s famous 1808 ‘cartoon’ of ‘Bligh under the bed’. The only contemporary visual documentation of this complex early colonial political event, it is clearly the original source document for Friend’s own version of ‘The Arrest of Governor Bligh’, c. 1965. 

This single, simplistic cartoon represents a clash between two authorities – civil and military – and is the only image that records the entire political history of the complex chain of  events leading up to Australia’s only military coup. The so-called Rum Rebellion occurred on 26 January 1808, during which the rule of William Bligh (1754–1817), the fourth Governor of New South Wales, was overthrown by Major George Johnston, senior officer of the NSW Corps.

Bligh had been appointed Governor of New South Wales on 14 May 1805, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. Taking up the office in Sydney on 13 August 1806, Bligh swiftly began carrying out his orders but in so doing made many powerful enemies both within the corps and the set of settler ‘exclusives’ who controlled the trade in rum on which the  colonial  economy was run.

Early on the evening of 26 January, spurred on by John Macarthur and with no legal authority, Major George Johnston declared himself Lieutenant-Governor and marched on Government House watched by 200 onlookers. After a long search through the property, Bligh was arrested and deposed by Johnston who declared martial law — Bligh was reputed to have been found hiding under a bed.

Having been placed on public exhibition, ensconced between two candlesticks at Whittle’s home, shortly after the event, the drawing was presumably later presented to Major Johnson as a souvenir. In 1891, the watercolour was subsequently presented by the Johnston Family of Annandale, descendants of Colonel George Johnston, to the National Art Gallery (Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney). The Illustrated Sydney News reported, 'A very interesting addition has been made to the National Art Gallery collection by Mrs Fanny Johnston of Annandale, who has presented the Government of New South Wales with the original family oil paintings and a number of relics, all of which are objects of historic value in connection with the early settlement of Australia.’ In a letter accompanying her gift and addressed to Sir Henry Parkes, Mrs Johnston wrote, ‘It is the wish of myself and family that…these mementoes will be held in perpetuity on behalf of the Australian people.’ (Illustrated Sydney News, 19 December 1891, p20).