Lot 71: WILLIAM DEXTER , British 1817 - 1860 A SKETCHBOOK BY JOHN SMEDLEY (1841 - 1903) AND WILLIAM DEXTER (1817 - 1860) A bound album of fifty-six works mounted on album pages
Title inscription: 'Sketches by Jno: Smedley/of Bulli' Still life study: pomegranate and pineapple Pencil, watercolour and gouache 20.1 by 26.8cm Floral study: daisies and celandine Pencil and watercolour 11.8 by 16.1cm Still life study: plums Pencil, watercolour and gouache 13.1 by 19.4cm Floral study: poppies Pencil and watercolour 16.8 by 13.2cm Study: ducklings Pencil and watercolour 10.8 by 19.7cm Study (copy?): mounted men in river Pencil 10.2 by 15.2cm Study (copy?): smugglers' feast Pencil, ink and wash 13 by 21.1cm Study from sculpture: sleeping putto Ink and wash Initialled lower right 8.2 by 16.3cm Still life study: peaches, pear and grapes in a pedestal bowl Watercolour and gouache 14.5 by 17.2cm Study (copy?): fisherman drying nets Watercolour and gouache 12 by 17.8cm Study (copy?): peasant figures on river punt Watercolour with Chinese white highlights Initialled lower right 9.9 by 18.6cm Study (copy): scene from Scottish history Pencil and watercolour 12.1 by 18.1cm Study: parrot fish and soldier fish Watercolour and gouache Initalled lower right; inscribed with title opposite page 12.7 by 21.8cm Study (copy): head of a boy Charcoal and pencil Signed lower right 17.9 by 15.5cm Study from sculpture: bust of a child Ink and wash with Chinese white 26 by 18.3cm Attributed to William Dexter Landscape study: cabbage tree palms - Illawarra region (?) Watercolour 16.2 by 13cm Attributed to William Dexter Portrait study: woman with crucifix - Margaret Smedley (?) Pencil and watercolour with Chinese white 25.2 by 17.7cm Attributed to William Dexter Portrait study: bald man with side whiskers - Samuel Smedley (?) Brown wash 18.2 by 13.2cm Attributed to William Dexter Portrait study: woman with hand to brow - Margaret Smedley (?) Pencil, brown wash and scratching-out 23.5 by 18.9cm Portrait study: bald man with side whiskers - Samuel Smedley (?) Pencil and brown wash 22.4 by 18.5cm Study: leaves Pencil and brown wash with Chinese white highlights 27.2 by 19cm Study: leaves Pencil and brown wash with Chinese white highlights 27.2 by 19.1cm Study (copy?): seascape with ketch Pencil, watercolour and gouache with Chinese white 15 by 25.1cm Study (copy): Arab with pipe and horse Pencil, ink and wash Initialled lower right 18.1 by 25.5cm William Dexter Floral study: roses and daisies Watercolour with Chinese white highlights Bears signature lower right 21.5 by 26.1cm Floral study: roses Pencil and watercolour 19.3 by 27.7cm Study (copy?): sheep Pencil and watercolour 17.4 by 27.2cm William Dexter Study: pineapple Brown wash with Chinese white highlights Signed lower right 18.5 by 23.8cm Still life study: fruit Pencil and brown wash 19.1 by 29.4cm Still life study: fruit Pencil, watercolour and gouache 11.8 by 24.2cm, irreg. Attributed to William Dexter Portrait study: young man- John Smedley (?) Pencil and brown wash 11.8 by 8.8cm Floral study: lilium Pencil 13.3 by 14.3cm Attributed to William Dexter Portrait study: young man with side whiskers Pencil and brown wash 21.5 by 16.7cm Study (copy?): travellers in field Pencil and brown wash 20 by 26.2cm The Gap, Watson's Bay and South Head Pencil and brown pastel 19.5 by 28.7cm Study: pineapple (copy from f23) Pencil 19.3 by 26.2cm Study: seashell Pencil Initialled lower right: 'JS' 13.9 by 19cm Study: peach (?) Pencil, watercolour and gouache Inscribed ink, top centre: 'No.12'; signed lower right 9.2 by 15.1cm Landscape study: coastal scene with sluice gate Pencil Initialled lower right 11.9 by 18.5cm Study: barrel and tray Brown ink with Chinese white 12.9 by 13.9cm Still life study: bunch of grapes Pencil 10.9 by 16.4cm Laying of foundation stone, Sydney Railway Terminus, 1855 Pencil Inscribed lower right.: 'Sydney Railway', 'JS'; inscribed on secondary support, lower centre: '.SYDNEY.RAILWAY.' 18.1 by 28.6cm Study: Indian (?) woman with a raised arm Pencil 17.6 by 10.3cm Cover design for Punch, with various Australian motifs with architectural sketches on reverse Pencil 28 by 21.6cm Study: architectural interior (Masonic Hall?) Pencil with extensively annotated with colour notes 25.5 by 34.4cm Wollongong from the Eastern Side Pencil Initialled lower left and inscribed with title lower centre 26.3 by 39.6cm Study: birds (after William Dexter?) Brown ink tracing on tissue paper 47.5 by 36cm, irreg. Study: dead ducks ( after William Dexter?) Pencil tracing on tissue paper 52.5 by 41cm, irreg. Architectural study: grave for an artist Ink and wash 20.2 by 25.3cm, irreg. Gravestone decorated with palette and brushes and inscription: 'Sacrum Momento [sic] Mori...'; superinscribed pencil: 'Dexter' (Study (copy): Gothic ruin with Still life sketch on reverse Pencil Initialled and dated 28/11/51 lower right 35.6 by 25.6cm Study (copy): Tudor ruin Pencil Initialled and dated 2/8/51 lower right 22.6 by 16.5cm, irreg. Attributed to William Dexter Design for a banner Pencil, with additions in brown ink Inscribed in image on banderole; 'BAND OF HOPE'; signed lower right, ink: 'J.S.'; inscribed lower centre, ink over pencil: 'Design of (?) Banner/John Smedley'; inscribed lower right, ink: 'Bendigo/Banner' 28 by 19 Architectural study: church interior with pulpit) Pencil 27.3 by 18.8cm Study: dead birds (copy after William Dexter?) Pencil 27.2 by 37.8cm Study: woman with balustrade (tracing?) Ink on wax paper 16.9 by 13.1cm, irreg. Architectural drawing: elevation of a hall or villa in late Gothic/Tudor style Ink and watercolour Inscribed lower centre. : 'ENTRANCE FRONT.' 29.2 by 44.2cm
Notes
The scrapbook is a common but commonly undervalued artefact of 19th-Century middle class culture, particularly in colonial settings. Often though not exclusively a female preserve, it constitutes a distinctively personal and amateur art form, providing a vehicle for education (in presenting images of artistic or moral worth), for social intercourse (focusing in neighbourly visits and gifts and exchanges of scrapbook materials), for sentiment (in preserving images of loved ones and remembered places) and even for a genteel, modest self-expression (in showcasing the polite art of drawing in pencil and watercolour).υ1 The present album, recently discovered in England, has many of these characteristics. It contains copies of classical and academic works of art, it contains the work of multiple hands and it contains a number of what must be assumed to be family portraits. However, it is distinctive in the quality and historical significance of a number of its component pictures, and in the merit of its two contributors; the Anglo-Australian painter William Dexter (1817-1860) and the Australo-Asian architect John Smedley (1841-1903). While Dexter's and Smedley's lives and work have been researched and published elsewhere,υ2 this album provides tangible evidence of their close relationship. The earliest dated works in the album (ff. 41 and 42) are conventional copies of prints of Gothic ruins, but indicate Smedley's early promise. Two years later, his father, Samuel Smedley, would write; '... My dear son John is the pride of my eyes and the delight of my heart. He is growing a nice youth and bids fair to make a Clever Painter.'υ3 The arrival in the colonies in 1852 of the boy's (much older) cousin, the artist William Dexter, had quite an impact on young Smedley. After Dexter's death in 1860, his widow Caroline wrote a letter to Mrs Smedley in which she makes reference to the young man's grief: 'I am not surprised to learn that John was affected, it would have seemed unnatural had he not been so; for he [Dexter] was always kind and attached to John...'υ4 In the present album, a precise pen and ink architectural study for an artist's grave (ff. 40), complete with palette and brushes below its 'Sacrum Momento [sic] Mori' inscription bears a sad postscript: the name 'Dexter' pencilled onto the stone. Dexter's teaching and encouragement was obviously important to Smedley's artistic development. As a fourteen-year-old Smedley is known to have assisted Dexter with the prize-winning design for a presentation gold cup (for the engineer of the Sydney-Parramatta railway, William Randle), and he also copied Dexter's painting of the fire at Kent's Brewery (original and copy both Powerhouse Museum, Sydney). A decorative page of still life and landscape painted by Smedley in 1861 clearly shows Dexter's china-painter influence in its fruit and flowers, bird and butterfly and lace tablecloth.υ5 The present album provides further evidence of artistic pedagogy. In addition to the numerous still life and figure composition copying exercises, a fluent, signed watercolour of a pineapple by Dexter (ff. 23) is repeated in hesitant pencil by Smedley on f. 30, and there are also three very Dexter-like avian subjects (two of them on tracing paper). All of these inclusions, as well as a signed flower study bearing a signature and plausibly attributable portraits may be remnants of an artistic bequest to young Smedley from his cousin, mentor and friend. Caroline Dexter's letter also mentions, suggestively; 'I am glad that he left those things to Johnny - as I think he deserves them and nobody had a greater right to them...'υ6 In addition to its Dexter-Smedley interest, the present album also contains several works of independent and marked historical significance. There are designs for the cover of Punch magazine and for a banner for the children's temperance organisation 'The Band of Hope', as well as a number of architectural studies. A pencil and pastel view of The Gap, Watson's Bay and South Head (f. 29) is a fine example of mid-19th Century amateur topographical drawing. Rarer and more intriguing is the sketch entitled Sydney Railway (f. 34) which appears to show the laying of the foundation stone of the Terminus building in 1855. Perhaps most interesting is a pencil sketch entitled Wollongong from the East, a valuable addition to the limited early visual record of the city.υ7 Evidently drawn by young Smedley while at home with his family at Bulli, this work shows the cliff road approach to the young township, with the Brighton Hotel (formerly the Waterloo Stores, 1839) and the Old Courthouse (1858) clearly visible at the centre, and the gaol (1859) under construction immediately adjacent to the latter. Recognizable on the left are the Wesleyan Chapel and St Andrew's Presbyterian Church and the bell tower of the original St Michael's Church of England (1847), with the new Edmund Blacket-designed St Michael's under construction on the hill behind. On the elevation at the right is Bustle Hall, the home of Charles Throsby Smith, 'the Father of Wollongong', while the coastal escarpment and the peaks of Mount Kembla and Mount Keira are visible behind. We are grateful to Michael Watson and to Carol Herben of the Illawarra and District Historical Society for assistance in cataloguing this work. 1. See Caroline Jordan, Picturesque pursuits : colonial women artists & the amateur tradition, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2005 2. See biographical entries in Joan Kerr (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992; and Michael J. Watson, 'William Dexter: "Forget him was impossible"', Art and Australia, vol. 24, no. 3, Autumn 1987, pp. 378-382 3. Samuel Smedley to his father, 1 January 1853, Dexter papers, La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, ms 11630 4. Caroline Harper Dexter to Margaret Smedley, 13 March 1860, Dexter papers, La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, ms 11630 5. John Smedley, Scenes of Sydney, 1861, pencil and watercolour on embossed card, 23 x 17.5 cm, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (SSV/11) 6. Caroline Harper Dexter, lit. cit. 7. The most significant of the early views are probably Robert Westmacott's Wollongong, from the stockade, 1840 (National Library of Australia) and John Rae's Wollongong in 1851 (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
