Lot 108: GEORGE EDWARDS PEACOCK (1806-?1890)

Sydney from Macquarie Street oil on canvas 38.6 x 84 cm PROVENANCE Private collection, Scandinavia NOTES An unusually large panoramic view of Sydney by Peacock, ranging from the new Tudor Gothic Government House (occupied 1845) and Stables on the left to the villas and windmills on Woolloomooloo Ridge and the statue of Sir Richard Bourke (unveiled 1842 at the top of the Botanic Gardens, and since moved to in front of the Mitchell Library) on the right. Typically, Peacock includes closely observed topographical detail, often of personal significance; South Head Light (near where he resided) can be made out on the horizon and Sir Richard Bourke (Governor 1831-1837, to whom Peacock's wife came out to Sydney with letters of recommendation, and who patronised the artist) stands recently commemorated at the extreme right. The artist presents the panorama in his customary picturesque manner, setting the scene above a foreground of sheep and emus at pasture on the grasses of the domain. There is a marginally smaller version of this subject by Peacock, with some variations, in the State Library of New South Wales (ML676 A View of Sydney from the Botanic Gardens?, signed and dated 1852, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 76.5cm., for which see R. Neville, George Edwards Peacock in the Picture Gallery, Sydney, 2002, no. 26). The similarities between the two pictures suggest a similar date for the present undated picture. The title of the present work, preserved on the frame, presumably originated from an old label on the reverse (which no longer survives). The son of the vicar of Sedburgh, Yorkshire, the artist was baptised George Edwards Peacock in 1806, named, like his brother, after his mother Catherine's maiden name of Edwards. A solicitor by 1830, he struggled to find the means to maintain his wife and child as he wished and resorted to forging a power of attorney to access his brother's money. Arrested and sentenced to death for forgery at the Old Bailey in 1836, the sentence was commuted to transportation and he arrived on the Prince George in Sydney in 1837. His first years were spent as a clerk at the penal colony of Port Macquarie before he managed to be transferred to Sydney in 1839 to join his wife and child (who had followed him out to New South Wales in 1837). In Sydney he trained with James Dunlop, the government astronomer, and was meteorologist at South Head by 1840, where he would reside in a government cottage, alone (his marriage failed), until retired by Governor Denison in 1856. Peacock was conditionally pardoned in 1845 but obliged to remain in the colony. His career as a painter appears to begin around 1844 with the production of small scale pictures on paper and card, typically signed with initials, dated and titled on labels pasted to the reverse. The majority of pictures are views of Sydney from South Head Road and commissioned portraits of particular villas and vistas in the eastern suburbs. He exhibited in the later 1840s and expanded his repertoire to include larger and more ambitious signed canvases in the early 1850s. Nothing is known of his life after 1856, although a picture titled Richmond Bridge was exhibited by a George Peacock at the Victorian Society of Artists in Melbourne in 1857, and two small views of Hobart and Launceston attributed to him (Christie's London, 14 July 1994, lot 148), together might suggest he quit Sydney and visited Tasmania and Melbourne in 1856-57.