Description:

George BAXTER (1804–1867)
A pair: 'Australia: News from home' and 'News from Australia'
Watercolour and gouache
Each signed lower left: Baxter

Accompanied by impressions of Baxter's oil process prints based on the compositions (Lewis, nos 195 and 196), each with Baxter's embossed mark in the lower margin

Also with three books on Baxter's prints: C.T. Courtney Lewis, The Picture Printer of the Nineteenth Century – George Baxter 1804–1867 (1911); C.T. Courtney Lewis, George Baxter – The Picture Printer (numbered 329 of 1,000, n.d. [but 1924]); and H.G. Clarke, Baxter Colour Prints, Pictorially Presented (1920–1921)
The watercolours each 21.5 x 29cm

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Melbourne, now offered from the estate of the late owner

OTHER NOTES:
An artist and printer, George Baxter is famous as the inventor and, in 1835, patentee of the first commercially viable colour printing process, by which a base image printed from an engraved plate was overlaid with oil colours applied and successively built up from a series of carefully aligned woodblocks, each block adding one or two colours.

Published in 1853, at the height the Gold Rush boom of emigration to Australia, Baxter's prints 'Australia: News from home' and 'News from Australia', capturing both ends of the emigrant experience, were immediately popular in England and remain among Baxter's best-known prints.

'Australia: News from home' is based on a painting by Harden Melville (1824–1894), The squatter's hut: news from home, exhibited in 1851 and now in the National Gallery of Australia (acc. no. 64.50), which Baxter entered into an agreement with Melville to reproduce using his process. Baxter's 'News from Australia' is possibly after a painting by Chester Earles (1821–1905).

The watercolours in this lot are Baxter's preparatory works for his prints, part of his working process in adapting Melville's (and Earles's?) paintings to the small scale of his prints. Interestingly, while Baxter was generally faithful to Melville's composition, the present watercolour study for 'Australia: News from home' does reveal intermediate stages in making some of his few minor alterations – for example, the colours of the hounds in the watercolour remain closer to those in Melville's painting than in Baxter's print, while the relative prominence and position of details in the scene beyond the door, such as the mounted stockman and the flock of cockatoos in flight, is different in the watercolour from that in both Melville's painting and Baxter's print.

  • Provenance: Private collection, Melbourne, now offered from the estate of the late owner
  • Dimensions: The watercolours each 21.5 x 29cm
  • Medium: Watercolour and gouache
  • Notes: An artist and printer, George Baxter is famous as the inventor and, in 1835, patentee of the first commercially viable colour printing process, by which a base image printed from an engraved plate was overlaid with oil colours applied and successively built up from a series of carefully aligned woodblocks, each block adding one or two colours.

    Published in 1853, at the height the Gold Rush boom of emigration to Australia, Baxter's prints 'Australia: News from home' and 'News from Australia', capturing both ends of the emigrant experience, were immediately popular in England and remain among Baxter's best-known prints.

    'Australia: News from home' is based on a painting by Harden Melville (1824–1894), The squatter's hut: news from home, exhibited in 1851 and now in the National Gallery of Australia (acc. no. 64.50), which Baxter entered into an agreement with Melville to reproduce using his process. Baxter's 'News from Australia' is possibly after a painting by Chester Earles (1821–1905).

    The watercolours in this lot are Baxter's preparatory works for his prints, part of his working process in adapting Melville's (and Earles's?) paintings to the small scale of his prints. Interestingly, while Baxter was generally faithful to Melville's composition, the present watercolour study for 'Australia: News from home' does reveal intermediate stages in making some of his few minor alterations – for example, the colours of the hounds in the watercolour remain closer to those in Melville's painting than in Baxter's print, while the relative prominence and position of details in the scene beyond the door, such as the mounted stockman and the flock of cockatoos in flight, is different in the watercolour from that in both Melville's painting and Baxter's print.

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November 25, 2024 6:00 PM AEDT
Hawthorn, Australia

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