Lot 34: South Head, Port Jackson, New South Wales

George Edwards Peacock (1806-1890)
South Head, Port Jackson, New South Wales
indistinctly signed with initials, inscribed and dated 'GEP 184(?) South Head Port Jackson NSW' on an old label on the stretcher
oil on canvas
11 5/8 x 15 5/8in. (29.5 x 39.7cm.)

AUSTRALASIA (Lots 29-39)


The view is taken from above Watson's Bay, near the South Head Signal Station and the Macquarie Lighthouse where Peacock was meterologist. The promontory in the centre left of the painting is Laing's Point, separating Watson's Bay and Camp Cove. Dobroyd Point is the sheer cliff across the Harbour in the middle distance. The two buildings at Watson's Bay are Clovelly House, centre, and the Watson's Bay Hotel, as it was called in the 1850s, on the foreshore. It was also known as the Greenwich Pier Hotel after 1854, and later still the Royal Hotel, before becoming the Vaucluse Council Chambers in the 1920s. It is now known as Dunbar House.

For detailed descriptions of Dunbar House and Clovelly House, see P. Fizsimmons, Eastern Suburbs Album , Atrand, 1985, pp.55-56.

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 in Sydney on the Prince George 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, 14 July 1994, lot 148), together might suggest he quit Sydney and visited Tasmania and Melbourne in 1856-57.

We are grateful to Elizabeth Ellis, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.