Curio

State Library of New South Wales
A view near Grose Head, NSW

A view near Grose Head, NSW

1809
SV / 143
Watercolour

In 1813 the respected surveyor and explorer George William Evans (1780–1852), was sent by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to find a passage through the interior of New South Wales. He followed the route of the Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson expedition, and became the first European to cross the Great Dividing Range into the expansive lands of New South Wales where he founded the site for Bathurst.

As well as being a competent surveyor, Evans was also an accomplished artist. His View near Grose Head, New South Wales (1809), with its wild landscape and untouched beauty, is thought to be one of the earliest surviving depictions of a Blue Mountains view. The work probably depicts the Grose River near the base of Grose Head, at the foothills of the Blue Mountains.

Lieutenant-governor William Paterson (1755-1810) first explored The Grose River in 1793, and named it after his friend and fellow officer Francis Grose (1758-1814.)

George William Evans did a number of drawings of the colony, both of settled and unsettled areas, when he was part of an expedition of the Lachlan River with Surveyor-General John Oxley in 1817.