Silver Bank Gum Tree, ab[out] 300 f. high. (a study). Kangaroo Hollow, Tasmania. 1 February 1854.

[Title from artist’s caption]. Graphite on paper, 200 x 140 mm, initialed in pencil l.l. ‘W. S.’, with general location and date below ‘Tasmania 1 Feb 1854’; captioned in pencil l.r. ‘Silver Bank Gum Tree ab[out] 300 f. high. Kangaroo Hollow. (A study)’; artist’s numbering in pencil ‘209’; laid down on card and tipped onto a fully contemporary backing sheet, 300 x 240 mm; in very good condition.

British naturalist and artist William Swainson became a member of the Linnean Society in 1815, and in the following year he joined the expedition of Henry Koster to Brazil, where he was able to collect an enormous number of important zoological and botanical specimens. In 1841 he emigrated to New Zealand, and was appointed to the committee of the New Zealand Company. He established a 300-acre estate, “Hawkshead”, in the Hutt Valley, although his ownership of the land was violently contested by local Māori in a protracted dispute. Swainson spent three years in Australia between 1851 and 1854, having been engaged by the colonial governments of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania to carry out botanical study during forestry operations. He spent the majority of his time in New South Wales, from early 1851 to early 1853; he then sketched in Victoria during the second half of 1853, and in Tasmania in the early part of 1854. Swainson died following his return to New Zealand in 1855.

A number of examples of Swainson’s sketches made in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania are held in the National Library of Australia and in the State Library of New South Wales. The Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge, holds in its Swainson Collection a huge number of ornithological, entomological and botanical specimens field-collected by him, primarily in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. as well as a large number of his ornithological drawings, for which he is perhaps best known.

Provenance:

William Swainson (1789-1855), by direct descent.

Lawsons, Sydney. Fine Art, 2 February 2024, lot 593