Caroline Simpson Collection

Vaucluse, near Sydney Sept' 12 1874 / F L Fisher

Fisher, F. L. (Frederick Leycester), 1841-1921.

1874

1 painting : watercolour on card ; 25.4 x 35.5 cm.

Inscribed in pencil top left verso: 'Vaucluse, near Sydney./ Septbr 12/74'.

Vaucluse House (Vaucluse, N.S.W.)
fountains
verandahs
crenellations

The Reverend Frederick Leycester Fisher was a member of a family with long-established connections to India, to the Bengal Ecclesiastical establishment and the Bengal Army on the Fisher side and to the Bengal Civil Service on the Leycester side. He was born in India in 1841, educated in England at the Blackheath School and at Cambridge University and ordained as a Church of England clergyman in 1869. He died in London in 1921 and his obituary in the 'Royston Crow' [Hertfordshire] on 4 November 1921 described him as a man of "somewhat retiring disposition", a "sound scholar, good linguist, and an artist of some considerable talent". His watercolour of Vaucluse is one of 10 pictures known to survive from a sort of Antipodean tour to Australia and New Zealand undertaken in 1874-1875.
Fisher's painting of the drawing room verandah and part of the garden of Vaucluse House depicts garden details that, until the purchase of the picture, had been considered to be 20th century additions.

Bonham & Brooks (Knightsbridge) 'Topographical & American pictures' 28 March 2001, lot.2

James Broadbent "Art for history's sake" in Insites issue 28 Spring 2001, pp.2-3.

Town & Country: portraits of colonial homes & gardens a Bendigo Art Gallery Travelling Exhibition, 2005.

Vaucluse House ; V2001/9

You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Museums of History NSW to request permission.

Picture

31000