Blamire Young

Mrs Oswald Syme, Melbourne
By descent to Mrs E.H.B Neill, Melbourne
Australian and European paintings, watercolours, prints and drawings, Christie's, Melbourne, 24 November 1992, lot 176
Purchased from the above

(possibly) Blamire Young, Guild Hall, Melbourne, October 1910

Elly Fink, The art of Blamire Young, Sydney: Golden Press, 1983 p. 58

This work has not been viewed out of its frame, however, it appears in good stable condition with no visible defects.
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Blamire Young's is a singular voice in early 20th century Australian art. With their arrangements of flat planes, extensive blank areas and alternately blotchy-wet and miniature-crisp rendering, his decorative, art nouveau watercolours introduced the innovations of Joseph Crawhall and the Beggarstaff Brothers (James Pryde and William Nicholson) to Australian graphic design, printmaking and painting.

Responding to the antiquarian enthusiasm that accompanied Federation and the turn of the century, in the early 1900s Young produced a number of imaginative reconstructions of events from early colonial history. Described in the artist's 1935 retrospective as his 'Early-day series',¹ this group includes the well-known Buckley acting as interpreter at Indented Head (1901, Geelong Gallery) and The lost explorers (circa 1905, New England Regional Art Museum), as well as the present work.

Lady Franklin at John Fawkner's hotel is in fact the first of two versions of the subject; the second (1905, Mildura Art Gallery), an oval composition almost three times the size, has essentially the same structure, though with a number of variations, such as the elimination of the figure of the little girl and the addition of an English sheepdog, a Scottish settler, a larger crowd and a tabletop still life. The earlier painting was purchased (probably from Young's first solo exhibition, at the Guild Hall, Melbourne) by Mrs Oswald Syme. In a letter to Mrs Syme (a copy of which accompanies the work) Young describes the subject in the following terms:

'Now I must tell you about Lady Franklin. Her husband Sir John Franklin was governor of Van Dieman's land in the thirties. She wished to go to Sydney & she determined to go by way of the new settlement at the head of Hobson's bay, not yet known as Melbourne. She came with her suite and put up at Fawkner's hotel, & mine host did not fail to paragraph the event in his paper "The Port Phillip Gazette" – That is the source of my information – The morning following her arrival she held a reception & Captain Collins read an address, the text of which is recorded in the P.P. Gaz. The most prominent residents signed this address, but the name of Batman is absent because it was Fawkner's affair & he couldn't stand Fawkner. Besides he was very ill at the time, After the reception Her ladyship left for Sydney & the residents with much heartiness escorted her as far as Campbellfield – She was the first lady who travelled from Melb. To Sydney, though some had previously done the journey the other way.'² 

1. Exhibition of works by the late Blamire Young, Fine Art Society's Gallery, Melbourne, 20-30 March 1935
2.  Blamire Young, letter to Mrs Oswald Syme, Toorak, 17 October 1910