Photograph of a portrait painting of Captain Henry Sinclair, explorer and founder of Port Denison (Bowen), Queensland.

Gelatin silver print photograph, produced around 1900, of a portrait painting dating to around 1865; cabinet card format, 185 x 135 mm (mount); no photographer’s imprint; old pencil inscription verso identifies the subject as ‘Captain Sinclair, who discovered Port Denison’; 4cm tear lower left edge (not affecting the oval portrait itself), small loss at each corner.

In 1859 Captain Henry Daniel Sinclair (1818-1868), in the ketch Santa Barbara, discovered a port in what is now known as the Whitsunday region of Queensland, which he named Port Denison. (The township would be renamed Bowen in 1865). Sinclair made his discovery in anticipation of receiving a substantial reward from the New South Wales Government. However, the discovery was made immediately prior to the separation of Queensland from New South Wales: ultimately, both colonial governments refused to honour the promised reward, so Sinclair received no financial compensation for his efforts.

The John Oxley Library holds a digital image (Image Number oai:alma.61SLQ_INST:99183513698802061) of the same portrait painting of Sinclair, which its catalogue entry notes is a ‘Copy of the painting made by Captain Sinclair’s daughter’. This statement is somewhat ambiguous: the portrait photograph, done in the 1860s not long before Sinclair’s death in 1868, cannot have been painted by any of Sinclair’s children, as his oldest daughter, Amelia, was born in 1857. This probably means that Sinclair’s daughter was responsible for the photograph of the portrait, rather than the painting itself.