Martens' account book lists the sale of this painting to Alexander Macleay for 3 guineas on 7 March 1836 as 'View Elizabeth Bay'. [Mitchell Library ZDL MS142]. The watercolour relates to a pencil sketch, titled 'Elizabeth Bay' and dated December 1835, in the collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW [ZPXC 391, f.21]. The drawing is annotated with references to plants and colours.
The painting shows part of the stone wall and driveway in front of Macleay's Elizabeth Bay House, looking north-east, with Clarke Island in the middle distance. The house had not been completed at this date, but the garden had been laid out and planted with many exotic species which Macleay had been sent from botanists around the world. In his description of the landscaping of the Elizabeth Bay House estate, written in 1835, the nurseryman Thomas Shepherd described "a dwarf ornamental stone wall, having at two extreme points corners of ornamental scroll work ... surmounted by a curvilateral coping with a few inches of projection". "The ground outside of this wall towards the bay", said Shepherd, "falls abruptly down a slope". [ref: Thomas Shepherd
Lectures on landscape gardening in Australia Sydney, William McGarvie, 1826, p.89.
