Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Sydney - Capital New South Wales

Sydney - Capital New South Wales

Founded by Governor Phillip – Named after Lord Sydney Secretary for the Colonies: 1788
c1799
Oil on canvas
Donated by Sir William Dixson, 1929
DG 56

This painting was probably painted in England, composed from drawings made in Sydney. It appears to show Sydney around 1799. By this time, Sydney was a small town of some 3000 people and its future was no longer questioned: the despair of the famine and drought of the early 1790s had given way to optimism about the colony’s potential.

The artist who made the original drawings for this painting is standing on the right, above the head of Sydney Cove, near what is now Grosvenor Street. First Government House, side on to the viewer and with a verandah, can be seen at the top of what is now Bridge Street. Government House is now the site of the Museum of Sydney.

The painting was purchased by Sir William Dixson in 1915 from the estate of a descendant of the first Viscount Sydney, after whom the settlement of Sydney was named.

A Sydney prospectus

Most colonial landscape images made before 1830 focused on the towns and villages rather than the landscape itself. Colonists were keen to prove the value of the settlement, and were happy to boast of its achievements. They were very much aware that the reputation of the colony was not high: most people in Europe thought of it as a cesspit of iniquity, crime and debauchery.


In many ways, these townscapes of Sydney were like investment prospectuses: that so much development could take place in so short a time was a matter of local pride and argued for the underlying strength and moral backbone of the colony. Local artists rarely embellished their images, and were often commissioned to paint very literal, brick-by-brick images of the town. It was not until the 1830s that Sydneysiders began to look for more artistic representations of their town. Indeed in the 1820s, leading Sydney merchants proposed to commission a panorama of Sydney on at least two occasions, in the belief that such large-scale, minutely delineated images of the town would encourage both emigrants and investment.