Fish catch and Dawes Point, c. 1817
John Lewin
Oil
Art Gallery of South Australia, Gift of the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation and South Australian Brewing, 1989
899P30
This oil painting is Lewin’s most complex surviving painting of local Sydney fish. At its centre, facing right, is what appears to be a Murray cod, which Lewin would have encountered on the Bathurst Plains in 1815. In the background is Dawes Battery, on Dawes Point. Lewin struggles to control this composition. The fish seem to float in space, unconnected to each other.
Commentary by Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian
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