Staghorn Creek, Yackandandah, 1877

Watercolour on card, 380 x 550 mm, signed and dated lower left: F. B. Gibbes / 1877, in a gilded period frame. A large format, picturesque watercolour of regional Victoria.

Francis Blower Gibbes was born in Gretna Green, Scotland, in 1815, son of Captain Francis Blower and Elizabeth Sarah, nee Saffrey. The family emigrated to New South Wales in about 1840, with Gibbes Junior relocating to Melbourne in 1856, adopting the profession of Artist. He exhibited at the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1857, and elected secretary of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, a position he held until 1886. Gibbes exhibited about 140 paintings in at least 15 art exhibitions between 1872 and 1888, as well as teaching painting. A correspondent in the Argus of 25 October, 1905, noted he was ‘held in the highest esteem by his pupils’. He died on 2 March 1904 and was buried in St. Kilda cemetery.

This painting has previously been catalogued for sale as the unspecified view Farmhouse in a Landscape. Another (smaller) view of the same property was sold at auction in 2022, identifying the property as ‘Staghorn Creek, Yackandandah’ (Shapiro Auctioneers, The Robert Hutchinson Collection of Australiana, Sydney, 22/02/2022, Lot No. 119).

Gibbes exhibited six paintings at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales Annual Exhibition, 1880, including a work titled Creek, Yackandandah, which very well could be the present work.

Other works by Gibbes can be found in the State Library of Victoria and the State Library of New South Wales, as well as the Hamilton Gallery (Victoria).

Provenance: 

Private Collection, Melbourne

Reference:

KERR, Joan. The dictionary of Australian artists.  Painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870. Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 290-1.