Margaret Sarah Cleburne | Mt Direction Homestead (Cleburne) Risdon | SOLD
Mt Direction Homestead (Cleburne House) c 1860
Pencil and scratching out on scraperboard
16 x 23 cm
Signed with initials M S C on the lower left.
A beautifully rendered drawing with scratching out, c 1860. In excellent condition,
Set of three works: pencil drawing, watercolour and oil painting sold together
SOLD
“Mt. Direction Homestead is representative of the essential Australian homestead colonial farm from the first decades of settlement. Commenced in 1825, it is long, low slung and graceful, owing as much to the architecture of Colonial India and Cape Town as Tasmania. Removed from the cares of town and once isolated by the Derwent River, it set itself up within twenty years of settlement as a contained and self-sufficient response to the wilderness. Mt. Direction homestead evolved during the 1830s and 1840s from the standard Georgian four squares with attics above, gun barrel hall down the middle floor plan, to receive the polite distinction of a ball room, with separate entry from the rear courtyard….”
– Architectural historian Warwick Oakman, 2004.
Margaret Sarah Cleburne (1829-1885)
BIO
Cleburne artist and sketcher, was one of the eight daughters of Richard Cleburne, a Tasmanian merchant, and his wife Sarah.
According to Henry Allport, she was a pupil of T.E. Chapman . An oval pencil on scraperboard drawing initialled 'M.S.C.’, From Kangaroo Bay, Tasmania (c.1853, Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum), is attributed to her.
Watercolours of the 1860s and 1870s (Crowther Library) reveal that at its best her work is finely detailed with a good sense of perspective but its quality is uneven. Some of these are only initialled; all are undated. They include The Road to Mount Direction on the Derwent, Tasmania (watercolour), The River Derwent at Old Beach (c.1860, watercolour, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts) and other views of the river.
Cleburne died, unmarried, on 19 April 1885, aged fifty-five. Dr Crowther purchased her watercolour, The First Chimney in Van Diemen’s Land at Lt Bowen’s Camp Risdon 1803 (c.1870), at a sale in her home, Cleburne House, Mount Direction, on 17 February 1944.
Extract from Design and Art Online Australia
