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Title:
[unidentified house, probably in Sydney] / John Campbell
Creator:
Campbell, John, 1855-1924
Date:
1895
Format:
1 painting : watercolour on card ; 34.5 x 59 cm. [image size]
Inscription:
Signed, bottom right, 'John Campbell 1895'. Stamped below image, bottom right: The Metropolitan Art Agency and Circulating Library, 22 Imperial Arcade, Sydney / J.S. Thompson, manager. Inscribed in ink on verso, top left: 'Robert Campbell / Herbert Street / Paddington".
Subject:
garden ornament
conservatories
verandahs
houses
kerbing & guttering
Description:
John Campbell was a Scottish-born signwriter and decorator who came to Australia sometime before 1883, travelling and working in the eastern states before settling in Perth around 1900. Janice Baker, in the exhibition catalogue published in conjuntion with the 'John Campbell 1855-1924' exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2003, notes that Campbell's paintings of buildings are rendered with a naive attention to detail which provide valuable historical documentation. In this painting of an unidentified Sydney house, Campbell has carefully recorded the details of iron lace and verandah columns, terracotta guttering, and garden ornament and plantings - including bird's nest ferns and tree ferns and even small terracotta pots in the conservatory.
It has been suggested that the house may be either 'Boronia' or 'Telopea', two almost identical two-storied houses with cast-iron balconies built in 1885 in Mosman by two carriage builders, brothers James and John Keary. The houses had a common garden and entrances respectively in Military Road and Cowles Road.
Provenance:
Licencee of the Coopernook Hotel, ca. 1970; William S. Ellenden (auctioneer) 1989.
Published in:
James Broadbent "Art for history's sake" in
Insites
issue 28 Spring 2001, pp.2-3.
Source:
Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection ; L89/28
Material Type:
Picture
Record number:
31026
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