Lot 38: John Skinner Prout (1805-1876)

John Skinner Prout (1805-1876)
Diggers on the road to a rush
signed 'SKINNER PROUT' (lower right)
watercolour on card
unframed
10 5/8 x 14 7/8in. (27 x 37.8cm.)

Booth's Australia was originally sold in 30 parts, each illustrated by four engravings after Prout, Chevalier, Brierly, Baines and others: 'The story he tells - although it may read like a romance - is merely the record of the every-day life of Britons in ANOTHER ENGLAND.'

'The news of the discovery of gold in New South Wales was received in Melbourne simultaneously with the accounts of the influence it had exercised upon the inhabitants of Sydney... Horses and houses, bullocks, and belongings of every description, and the little household treasures that had been gathered together with so much care and anxiety, were looked upon as naught when compared with the great good anticipated from a visit to the gold-fields. Nothing beyond the means of getting there was cared for...

'It must have been pleasant work prospecting for gold on the banks and in the valley of the River Yarra. There is always shade to be found there, and great plenty of water. The trees and shrubs are very beautiful, the land is rich and the whole district is now highly esteemed for qualities the early gold-seekers give it little credit for. The Yarra, however, was not to be the field of the greatest of the gold workings. Large parties of prospectors started off west, and gold in the Pyrenees, in the Lodden, near the Avoca, on Daisy Hill, and at Ballarat, at Mount Alexander, at Bendigo, and at a hundred other places was reported within a quarter of a year.' (E.C.Booth, op. cit., I (Victoria, The Discovery of Gold), pp.19-20).

Prout left Australia in 1848 before the discovery of gold in the colony: 'The family left for England in June 1848 and settled in London. Over the next twenty-eight years they lived at different addresses in the Camden Town-Kentish Town area. In the summer of 1850 Skinner Prout produced a diorama called Voyage to Australia based on his Australian experiences. The views were painted onto glass lantern slides and shown by projection. After the discovery of gold in Australia in the latter part of 1851 he updated this to produce a "moving panorama" (on rollers). This was exhibited over 600 times in London during 1852-53, taken on a three-month tour of the Plymouth-Torquay area in April-June 1854, and shown again at Leicester Square in 1855.' (J. Kerr, ed., The Dictionary of Australian Artists, Melbourne, 1992).

'In 1850 at the Western Literary and Scientific Institution, Leicester Square, he lectured and exhibited his dioramic views illustrating convict and emigrant life, and the habits of bushrangers and Aboriginals in Australia. In 1852 he published An Illustrated Handbook of the Voyage to Australia and in 1853 A Magical Trip to the Gold Regions; both works led to further exhibitions and ran to several editions. They also suggest that he may have revisited Australia, for he claimed that his sketches were made on the spot.' (ADNB)

For a related work, probably a companion to the present watercolour, see Christie's, London, 25 Sept. 2008, lot 38 (Alluvial gold washing [Victoria]), £22,500.