A game of croquet in progress outside police magistrate Helenus Scott’s residence on the Barracks site in the Government Domain, Newcastle, New South Wales. 14 December, 1868.

Watercolour on artist’s paper, 105 x 160 mm; initialled and dated in ink by the artist at lower left ‘R.E.S. / DEC 14, 68’ and captioned by her at lower right ‘The Barracks, Newcastle, N S Wales’; verso inscribed in the same hand: ‘For dear Henry, with Rose’s love’ (probably Henry Keylock Rusden, brother of the artist); fine condition.

Rose Selwyn (1824-1905), amateur sketcher and watercolourist, was born in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest daughter of Rev. George Keylock Rusden and his wife Anne, née Townsend. She emigrated with her family to New South Wales in 1834, where her father took up a position as Church of England minister in Maitland in the Hunter Valley. In 1852 she married Rev. Arthur Edward Selwyn, and then spent the years 1854-67 in Grafton where Edward also worked as a minister. The vast majority of Rose’s extant work dates from this period: the State Library of New South Wales holds a large number of Rose Selwyn’s pencil and watercolour sketches of Grafton and the Clarence River district, and another group of her watercolour views with similar subject matter is held by the Clarence River District Historical Society.

The Selwyns moved to Newcastle in 1867, where Edward had been appointed dean of Christ Church Cathedral. The present watercolour dates to the end of the following year, and it depicts an informal game of croquet being played on the lawn in front of the residence of Helenus Scott, the Newcastle police magistrate. This building was the former military hospital on the Newcastle Barracks site in the Government Domain; it still stands today, largely unaltered.

Helenus Scott was married to Rose Selwyn’s sister, Saranna, and the two families were extremely close. Rose and Edward Selwyn had cared for Helenus and Saranna’s daughter, Rose Scott, in Grafton when she was younger. Rose Scott is very possibly the figure depicted at far right in this watercolour, as she would have been about 20 years old around the time the watercolour was painted. Of the three male figures, two are almost certainly Helenus Scott and Edward Selwyn.

The inscription on the back of the watercolour suggests that Rose Selwyn sent the sketch to her eccentric brother Henry Keylock Rusden (1826-1910), who lived in Melbourne from 1853 until his death. (See the ADB entry https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rusden-henry-keylock-4524 ).

Rose Elizabeth Selwyn was not merely a competent sketcher and parson’s wife: in the last quarter of the nineteenth century she became an active advocate for women’s rights and served as president of the Newcastle branch of the Womanhood Suffrage League.