Newcastle in 1849

1849
Watercolour on paper
Donated by Sir William Dixson, 1951
DGA 10

John Rae, a Scottish-born public servant and administrator, was a keen amateur artist, art critic and lecturer in art and philosophy. Arriving in Sydney in 1839, he quickly established himself as a leading public figure in Sydney’s cultural life. One of his best friends was the English-born landscape artist John Skinner Prout: together they published Sydney Illustrated, with Prout providing the illustrations and Rae the text.

Rae seemed to enjoy fiddling with technology and new ideas. While he did not have the skills of a professional artist, he was keen to play with lenses and what he described as cameras in order to project landscape views onto sheets of paper, which he could then trace. In this way, he could make accurate drawings of views; all he then had to do was colour them appropriately. Beginning in the late 1840s with a series of watercolours of Sydney, he then explored further afield with panoramic views of Wollongong, Newcastle and later rural properties such as Sir John Hayes’ property at Welaregang.

But Rae’s system struggled with perspective: the setup of the lenses meant that there was always a distinctive curvature in the foreground of his panoramas. Nonetheless these panoramas were valued for the information they contained, and in 1883 this view of Newcastle was exhibited in the Calcutta International exhibition, alongside a photographic panorama taken in the late 1870s to demonstrate the development which had taken place over the previous 30 years.