Adam Gustavus Ball | Hunters (Aroona Station c 1854)
Hunters (Aroona Station) South Australia c1854
Medium: Pencil and red ochre on paper
Size: 34 x 25 cm
Signed lower right with initials.
This drawing was owned by John Hayward, the first Pastoralist to arrive in the Aroona Valley in 1851. Adam Ball worked in the area in the mid 1850s and drew at least one work for local another station owner George Marchant of Arkaba Station. It is very possible that this drawing was one of the first pictorial records of the original Australians living in the Aroona/Flinders Ranges region of South Australia.
A group of drawings that had been in Hayward’s possession in ‘Aroona, Freshford, Bath’ were discovered in 2013. It was thought that these drawings were taken back to the UK as a souvenir of his time in Australia. This drawing was a part of the group. The drawings have been sold to various institutions and private collections since then.
The men bear chest and arm scars and are wearing nose bones, most likely to be made from kangaroo bone. Interestingly, Ball has used small patches of ochre to begin colouring the rock on which the men stand. A hint of the new life occurring in the field below is made clear by the cows grazing near the tree line.
The drawing is in good condition and signed with initials on the lower right.
Aroona, north of Wilpena in the Flinders Ranges, was taken up as a lease for the first time in 1851 by the Browne brothers who offered J F Hayward a half share. The property was stocked with sheep driven up from Encounter Bay by Hayward. Aroona consisted of about 86 square miles of good salt bush country, or in another source rock-strewn mountains and porcupine grass. However there were good springs of water and a fairly reliable rainfall. Hayward sold Aroona to William Marchant in 1862. Aroona is now part of Oraparinna station.
Provenance:
Commissioned by Johnson Frederick Hayward c 1854 Aroona station SA.
Taken back to Aroona House in Freshford Bath UK
Related works:
A photographic reproduction of this piece c1870 resides in the State Library of South Australia (B 68683)
SOLD
Adam Gustavus Ball 1821-1882
Sketcher, Explorer and civil engineer emigrated from Ireland to New South Wales in early 1839. He worked in Sydney as a civil engineer for eight years before taking a job to move a herd of 2000 cattle overland to Adelaide. He remained in Adelaide and surrounding areas working as a surveyor and taking part in expeditions and exploration of South Australia. He soon became known on outlying sheep and cattle stations for his skill with the pencil. His sketches include incidents such as cattle musters, emu hunting, kangaroo hunting, camp scenes all executed with exceptional detail and skill. His work was popular and was displayed in many hotels and private homes.Ball exhibited with the Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1859 and 1860. Many of his sketches were reproduced as photographs by Townsend Duryea and G.J. Freeman in the 1860s and early 1870s and apparently sold well. Notably, a photograph of a pencil drawing of the death of the Victorian explorer Robert O’Hara Burke carrying these initials and titled ‘When I am Dead, Place My Revolver in My Hand and Leave Me Unburied as I Lie’ (1871, Mitchell Library) was included in Duryea’s Adelaide Album (1866) otherwise filled with photographic views of Adelaide streets and buildings.
Adam Gustavus Ball died at his residence in Childers Street, North Adelaide, on 22 August 1882, aged 61. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.
