Charles Rodius | Life In Sydney NSW
Life In Sydney NSW (c1834-35)
Attributed to Charles Rodius
Printmaker: John Gardiner Austin
Size: 15 x 27 cm (image) 20 x 28 cm (Sheet)
This work has been cut out and laid down to a piece of paper. An ink inscription on the lower portion of the sheet titles the work ‘Life In Sydney NSW’
An inscription verso in pencil states: ‘By Charles Rodius, Printed by J G Austin 1834-35.’
Housed in a colonial timber frame.
The 1830s were a particularly tough time for Indigenous Australians. The city of Sydney was expanding and a push into new farmlands in the interior was placed high on the list of priorities to enable growth. This move also created some of the worst racial tension of Australian history. Richard Neville states in his 1988 text ‘printmakers in Colonial Sydney’ that the ‘Viciousness (of the period) is exemplified by the Myall Creek Massacre’ where over 30 Indigenous Australian were murdered. The colony debated the issue of land rights, and the treatment of indigenous Australians but unfortunately the majority of colonists had little sympathy for the Aborigines.
This lithograph printed c1834-35 is one of the earliest pieces of Australian propaganda. Created during the racial conflict, and set against a empty background, the raw imagery sets the indigenous people up as an underclass of people. Depicted are some of the leaders of the Botany Bay tribe, drinking and fighting and apparently revelling a low moral behaviour. They have been completely dehumanized and their dignity destroyed. Depictions such as this made it substantially easier for the colonists to justify the land grab that was occurring and excused the treatment of what was perceived to be an inferior and savage race.
The imagery from this work was used several times throughout the 1830s. John Carmichael printed Male and Female Black Natives in 1839, using the child and drinking companions from this image. While the composition is similar, the character of the figures is different. (See National Gallery Australia NGA 89.62 ) Another lithographic print from c1839-40 by Edward Barlow, depicts the same image but in reverse. The title of this work is Natives of NSW- Botany Bay Tribe. (see Mitchell library collection SV/76) Both Artists claim that the work is theirs.
The date we have attributed to the piece in question is derived from a scrapbook of Rev. John Saunders, a Baptist Minister and temperance advocate, who was in Sydney, 1834-1847. His scrapbook is dated in chronological order and presents his journey to Australia prior to 1834. This was his diary of thoughts and travels. The lithograph that is titled “ Real Life In Sydney- Mitchel Library B 1106) has been tipped into his book during the 1834-5 years. This must have been one of his first impressions of the colony. Another print, also by Austin, depicting the South Head lighthouse, is also in the book. The paper on both works is consistent. The attribution to the Rev. John Saunders lithograph is to John Carmichael, but the paper that Austin used for printing during this period is inconsistent with that which Carmichael used. Carmichael’s lithographs seemed to use a thinner laid paper, rather than the heavy paper Austin used to print on.
A 19th century inscription in pencil on the back of our lithograph states that the work was delineated by Charles Rodius and printed by JG Austin. As the pair worked together during 1834-5 and the Reverend’s diary agrees with the attributed date, it is likely that the attribution to Charles Rodius is valid.
This is a rare piece of Sydney / Australian history, we have been able to locate only a very small handful of copies. Whilst disturbing from a racial point of view, it is significant in helping us better understand our history today.
SOLD
Born: 1802
Died: 1860
Charles Rodius, artist, was born in Cologne, Germany. Inscriptions in French on some of his drawings suggest that his background was French rather than German. He went to England and acquired an easy command of the English language. In 1829 he was convicted at Westminster on a charge of stealing a reticule and sentenced to transportation for seven years. He arrived in New South Wales in December 1829 in the Sarah.
On arrival Rodius was assigned to the Department of Public Works, where he was employed without salary in instructing civil and military officers in drawing. As a draughtsman he was also engaged by the colonial architect to produce plans of ‘every building throughout the Colony’ and to formulate plans of projected buildings. His service was considered invaluable, and his seniors were reluctant to uphold Rodius’s application for a ticket-of-leave which would exempt him from compulsory government service.
In addition to regular attendance at the department Rodius, as soon as he arrived in the colony, was engaged to teach drawing and perspective to the children of reputable gentlemen in Sydney. These included children of Chief Justice (Sir) Francis Forbes, of whom there is a small crayon-and-wash portrait by Rodius in the Dixson Collection, Sydney; W. Foster, chairman of the Courts of Quarter Sessions, and John Manning. All three testified on the artist’s behalf to his good conduct and regular attendance when, in November 1831, he applied to Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling for a ticket-of-leave. A ticket-of-exemption, with the requirement that he remain in the district of Sydney, was granted to Rodius in July 1832, a ticket-of-leave in February 1834, and a certificate of freedom in July 1841.
Rodius’s ticket-of-exemption records his calling, before conviction, as ‘artist and architect’, and he is believed to have made engravings of buildings in Paris for the French government. In a notice published in 1839 advertising that he was giving lessons in drawing and perspective, Rodius described himself as a ‘Pupil of the Royal Academy of France’.
In 1831 the first of his lithographed portraits of Aboriginal ‘Kings’ and their wives was published, and the series was completed in 1834. In addition he executed portraits in ‘French crayon’ and oils, and the first of his landscape paintings to be engraved, a coloured view of Port Jackson taken from Bunker’s Hill, was sold in 1834. Other lithographed works included a view of the Lansdowne Bridge, 1836, a second series of Aboriginals’ portraits, 1840, and illustrations of the Kennedy expedition of 1849. Rodius contributed a small number of works to the exhibitions of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1847, 1849 and 1857. To the last he sent a portrait of Ludwig Leichhardt.
From his professional activities as art teacher, portraitist and landscape painter, Rodius must have made a fair living, for in 1835 he paid £45 for a block of land in Campbell Street, Sydney, and was able to support a wife and child. The parish of St James records the birth of a son, Charles Prossper, to Charles Rodius, artist, and Maria Bryan, seamstress, on 27 August 1834. This wife presumably died, for he remarried. The death of his second wife, Harriet, took place on 14 December 1838. The notice of Harriet’s death gave her age as ‘in her 17th year’, but the tombstone which Rodius engraved for her, ‘sculptured by her afflicted husband as a last tribute his affection can give’ (removed from the Devonshire Street cemetery to La Perouse) gives her age as 18. In July 1841, soon after receiving his certificate of freedom, Rodius sailed for Port Phillip, but the length and purpose of his stay is not known.
During the late 1850s Rodius suffered a stroke which paralysed one side, and on 9 April 1860 he died ‘of infirmity’ at the Liverpool Hospital. The record of his death indicates that he was a Roman Catholic, and that at the time of his death nothing was known to the hospital authorities of his family in Australia or of his parents.
Rodius signed his name ‘Rodius’ and it was spelt thus on his certificates of exemption, leave, and freedom. The spelling ‘Rhodius’ was used in newspaper notices of his work, and in communications concerning the artist’s activities in the Department of Public Works.
Biography written by Jocelyn Gray. Published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 2 (MUP) 1967.
