Frederick Garling | P & O Malta Moored outside Campbell's Wharf Sydney 1859
P & O Malta Moored outside Campbell's Wharf Sydney 1859
34 cm x 52 cm
Watercolour and pencil on Whatmans paper
Inscribed on the mount in Garling’s handwriting
‘The P. & O. S. N. Cos Steamship MALTA Capt’ Down at her moorings off Moore’s Wharf Sydney 1859′
Moore’s wharf and warehouses were built on Millers Point by the wealthy merchant, Joseph Moore, and it was from his wharf that the first shipment of gold from Australia was sent to London The Steamship ‘Malta’ was under the Command of Captain Henry Down (1820-1864), who is depicted in the scene wearing a top hat seated in the tender being rowed out to his ship. The watercolour has remained in Down’s family since it was painted in 1859. Henry Down joined P. & O. in 1847, at the age of twenty seven, as a 2nd Officer in the ‘Indus’. In 1852 he was promoted to Master and took command of the ‘Chusan’ on her voyage to Sydney The ‘Malta’ was built as a passenger paddle steamer in 1848 by Caird & Co. of Greenock. In 1858 her bow was lengthened and she was re-rigged as a three-masted barque and converted to screw propulsion by Laird’s at Birkenhead. She was now 1,942 tons, 87. 10 m long, 11. 89 broad and 8. 78 deep. The space where her paddles had been was apparently visible to the end of her days. The P. & O. Company began its service to Australia via Singapore in 1852 with the ‘Chusan’ under the command of Henry Down. Two or three years later the service was stopped. In January 1859 it was revived by the ‘Malta’ sailing from Southampton to Sydney to open the service from there to Mauritius and Suez. Thus this watercolour illustrates the ship on her first visit to Australia The ‘Malta’ was sold on 24 March 1876 to J. McBryde for 6,502 pounds sterling and was broken up on the river Clyde in 1882.
Provenance:
By descent through the family of Captain Henry Down
Sotheby’s, Fine Australian Paintings including the Dr. John L. Raven Collection, Melbourne, 17/04/1989, Lot No. 319
Frederick Garling 1806- 1873
Frederick Garling, customs official and marine artist, was born on 23 February 1806 at King Street, Holborn, London, the son of Frederick Garling senior. He arrived in Australia with his parents in the Francis and Eliza in 1815. In 1827 he was appointed a landing waiter in the Customs Office in Sydney at £250 a year and in 1847 was promoted acting landing surveyor. In 1856 before a parliamentary select committee, and in 1859 before a board of inquiry, he gave detailed evidence on the state and working of the Customs Department.
He was entirely self-taught as an artist and specialized, naturally enough, in marine subjects. His output was prodigious: it is said that he painted a large proportion of the ships which entered Port Jackson during his lifetime. Most of his work, which was generally unsigned, was in water-colour and characterized by a feeling for atmosphere absent from the work of earlier Australian topographical artists. Examples of his art are to be seen in the Dixson and Mitchell Galleries, Sydney, and in the home of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. He also wrote some verse of an undistinguished quality. He died in Sydney on 16 November 1873.
In 1829 at St Philip’s, Sydney, he married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Lieutenant Ward of the 1st Regiment, and niece of General Hawkshaw of the East India Co.’s service. They had seven sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Frederick Augustus (1833-1910), was an explorer and pioneer in north Queensland.
