View looking east across Woolloomooloo Bay to Potts Point, with the mansion “Bomera” prominent, early 1870s.

Albumen print photograph, 128 x 190 mm; laid down recto of a 19th-century album leaf with a fully contemporary caption beneath: Potts Point, Woolomoloo [sic]; a very stromg print with rich tonal range, in excellent condition.

A rare early photograph of the magnificent Potts Point mansion “Bomera”, which was built in 1856 by architect John F. Hilly and still stands at 1 Wylde Street. The unidentified two-storey mansion visible behind and slightly to the left of “Bomera” appears to be situated roughly on the spot now occupied by the mansion “Tarana” (1889).

This photograph was taken from almost the same vantage point on Mrs. Macquarie’s Road as one by the American & Australasian Photographic Company (Charles Bayliss and Beaufoy Merlin) which is held in the SLNSW (Grantham Castle and Campbell Lodge and other mansions on Potts Point from Mrs. Macquarie’s Road. Call Number ON 4 Box 60 No 367). The A&APC image is given a rather broad approximate date of 1870-75.

We have tentatively attributed this photograph (as well as the other three from the same source) to John Degotardi senior (1823-1882). Of the photographic artists active in Sydney in the late 1860s and early 1870s, Degotardi was unquestionably the most prolific documenter of Sydney’s majestic harbour and of the buildings – both civic edifices and private residences – which were the architectural landmarks overlooking the foreshores of its many bays and inlets. He published his views in various formats.