Sarah Cobcroft, 1856

Proud, successful and uncompromising

Aspirational Australian

Sarah Cobcroft (1772–1857) arrived free in New South Wales in 1790, as the partner of a convict, John Cobcroft. A skilled midwife, and able manager, Sarah made sure that her family prospered at Wilberforce, where they had been granted land. The extensive Cobcroft family— Sarah had ten children—did well in both Australia and New Zealand, and by the 1840s they were considered ‘respectable settlers’.

This plain portrait of an old woman—Cobcroft was eighty-five—without her teeth would not have been acceptable to a middle-class client. Though prosperous, the Cobcrofts’ convict origins and their trade as farmers assured their social position in the upper working classes, and Sarah simply would not have agreed to be painted in the mode of a middle-class lady.

Backler, himself an ex-convict, specialised in portraits of people such as publicans, shopkeepers, builders and farmers. For many, these portraits would have been the first oil portraits commissioned in their families and an important status symbol.
Display item Sarah Cobcroft, 1856

 

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