JAMES VAUGHAN BENTLEY AND MARY BENTLEY

18 leaves (inc. one blank) and one mounted photograph contained within covers of sketchbook, but all pages detached. Drawings are in generally good condition, with occasional slight rubbing of graphite. Minor discolouration of paper, esp. at edges of sheets. Several small folds, tears and vermin losses, esp. at corners.
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In 1844 the painter and lithographer John Skinner Prout arrived in Van Diemen's Land from Sydney, and before long had established a sketching club, like that of which he had been a member in Bristol in the early 1830s. The new, antipodean version numbered among its members Peter Gordon Fraser (1808-1888), William Porden Kay (1809 - circa 1870), Bishop Francis Russell Nixon (1803-1879) and F.G. Simpkinson de Wesselow (1819-1906), and these artists made regular excursions together, painting and drawing in the bush around Hobart Town throughout the 1840s.

Although somewhat less polished than the work of Prout and his immediate circle, the present works are nevertheless important period drawings: skilled amateur productions which typify the 1840s-1850s middle class colonial fashion for landscape sketching. The folio comprises a total of eighteen works, contained within the covers of a commerciallyproduced sketchbook. There are several European subjects, ranging from Romantic ruined British castles to Sublime Swiss mountains.

These conventional exercises were probably based on published engravings, and they reflect the widespread contemporary practice of copying, then even more common amongst amateurs than amongst professional artists. The folio also contains a botanical study of an orchid in watercolour and gouache, reminiscent of the manner of Louisa Ann Meredith (1812-1895), and a 'house portrait' by 1870s Melbourne landscape and architectural photographer Donald McDonald.

However, the core interest of the folio lies in ten Australian subjects, eight of them highly finished 'presentation drawings'. Executed in pencil, these carefully-rendered vistas are contained within strict, ruled rectangles, and are further 'framed' at each side by rocks or trees, in accordance with Picturesque convention. Most are neatly inscribed beneath the image with a descriptive title and the artist's name, with the occasional calligraphic flourish. They are 'pure', empty landscapes; save for the occasional excursionist, sailing vessel or herd of cattle, they are generally void of human presence. Three of the works are of the River Derwent at New Norfolk, though there are also several views of or near Hobart Town, a scene at Oatlands in the Tasmanian Midlands, and an unfinished sketch of Launceston. There is also one work titled 'Port Phillip Sketch', which probably (along with the McDonald photograph) indicates that the artist(s) later moved across Bass Strait. The drawings are inscribed as the work of James V. Bentley and Mary Bentley. Three similar drawings by James Bentley (The Junction of the Iron Stone Creek with the Derwent, Part of Campbell Town and The River Derwent near Risdon) are held in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart, and have been dated by that institution as circa 1859. While no certain biographical information is available on either individual, there is a record of the marriage of one James Bentley to Mary Courtnay at New Norfolk in September 1853 - the coincidence of names, dates and location suggests a feasible connection, and a possible avenue for further research.