Rev. G. E. Goonewardene, Native Wesleyan Minister - Galle, Ceylon. April 12/61 / Rev. Frederick James Jobson
Titled at top of image: Rev. G. E. Goonewardene, Native Wesleyan Minister - Galle, Ceylon. April 12/61.On the reverse of the drawing is a small watercolour sketch titled Image of Buddha at Minnangodde Temple, near Galle, Ceylon".
The artist of this sketch, the Reverend Frederick James Jobson, was initially trained as an architect, serving an apprenticeship to the architect, Edward James Willson, in Lincoln, England, before converting to Methodism in 1829. Jobson's book 'Chapel and School Architecture ...' (1850) which included three of his designs of Gothic-style chapels, was an important contribution to the development of the Gothic style in Methodist buildings.
Jobson entered the ministry in 1834, served most of his career in England, and was elected president of the Wesleyan Methodist conference in 1869. He visited Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) en route to and from the meeting of the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Conference in Sydney in 1861, calling at Pointe de Galle, between 6-21 November 1860 and 13-19 April 1861 and touring the south-western part of the island inspecting mission chapels and schools. A lengthy description of this visit is included in 'Jobson's Australia, with notes by the way, of Egypt, Ceylon, Bombay, and the Holy Land' (London, 1862). Jobson first met the Rev Goonewardene during his visit to Richmond Hill on Tuesday 6 November 1860: "In the evening preached to a native congregation, through an interpreter, our excellent native minister, Rev. G.E. Goonewardene. The assembly was novel and impressive. The women in their white dresses, the higher class men with combs in their hair, the Dutch burghers, with the solemn darkness open to us from the verandah around, were all Rembrandtic in effect". (p.67)
[Joy Hughes]
The Methodist Church, Overseas Division (Methodist Missionary Society);
Christie's (London) Topographical Pictures 16 July 1993, lot 207;
Caroline Simpson Collection, Clyde Bank, The Rocks, Sydney, 2001-2004.
