Richard Read Senior | Portrait of Julia Johnstone 1824
1824
34.5cm x 25.5cm
Watercolour and pencil on paper
PROVENANCE:
Probably commissioned from Read by the Julia’s mother, Esther (Mrs George) Johnston (1771? - 1846), Sydney. A coming of age gift for her 21st birthday
Thence to Julia Johnston
Thence to her sister, Blanche Weston née Johnston, Horsley Park
Thence by descent through Weston family
Sold at the Cowlishaw Collection sale- Sotheby’s Auction Sale, Sydney, 17 October 1984, lot 211.
Ruth Simon- Sydney (Purchased from above)
Private collection – Sydney Purchased from above
Day Gallery- Blackheath Purchased from Above
Governor Macquarie arrival in Sydney, Britain’s furthest colony, and island gaol, late in 1809 was the beginning of a significant change for Australia.
The harbour and town was described as ‘A charming object from the water’ but the reality was far different. At the end of his term as the 5th Governor of NSW, Macquarie defended his program of public works by stating that “All was in a most ruinous state of decay”.
Macquarie had an immense impact on the penal colony. He developed the first urban planning scheme with regulations. His tenure in Sydney paved the way for emancipists and immigrants wanting to begin a new life.
The Consecration of St James Church in 1824 marked the end of Macquarie’s building projects, and the beginning of a new era for Australia. Sydney was beginning to transition from a convict colony into a civilized free society with prospects for education, order and trade.
Richard Read Senior, who arrived in 1813, is regarded as the first painter to successfully introduce portraiture to the colony of NSW. He bolstered his reputation in the colony by stating that he was taught by the British artist Sir Joshua Reynolds.
John Lewin before him advertised in 1808 his skills in ‘painting a correct likeness’ but unfortunately the fledgling colony did not have the social or financial clout to support him.
Julia Johnston (1803-1879) was the daughter of George and Esther Johnston. George Johnston arrived in the colony in 1788 as the commander of the marine detachment sent to guard the new colony. He met Esther, a convict during the voyage to Australia and they had seven children together. Infamously, George Johnston was one of the ringleaders who overthrew Governor Bligh. This ended his Military Career.
Johnston’s fruitful friendship with Governor Macquarie ensured that the family lived a lavish life that was to be passed on to his family after his death in 1823.
Julia was the second eldest daughter and was born on the Johnston estate ‘Annandale’ in 1803. This portrait was completed in 1824 marks her 21st year of life and importantly is a record of the family estate and their social status in Sydney.
Julia, dressed in her best, a blue silk dress, holding her bonnet, ivory capped walking stick and accompanied by a small domestic dog, is standing close to her Family vault designed by Francis Greenway on the grounds of the family property, Annandale, an icon in early Sydney.
This portrait epitomises the desires of the new generation of Australians, those who became wealthy landowners, looking to release the bonds of a convict or military past.
It is the beginning of a new age in Australia, and Richard Read has captured it superbly.
The harsh light of Australia is evident, as is the landscape setting. A glimpse of Sydney Harbour is visible in the distance, over the plains. Very few early Australian colonial portraits are set on an identifiable backdrop. The inclusion of the family vault and picket fence in the composition place this on the family property Annandale, now in the suburb known as Annandale.
A late 19th century photograph of the property verify the composition of the backdrop.
The vault holds the remains of her recently deceased father and brother, a pictorial celebration of the love for her family.
The painting moved with Julia to her sister’s home ‘Horsley Park’. It remained here until the late 20th century. A photograph attributed to Henry King captured the painting next to the fire place in the sitting room in the late 19th century. (ML PXA 559)
One of the finest surviving and unusual Australian colonial portraits. Painted between the transition of Sydney as a penal colony, and Sydney as a civilised society.
SOLD
Richard Read Senior
(b.1765-1829?), artist, was born in London. In July 1812 he was sentenced in London to transportation for fourteen years and arrived in New South Wales in the Earl Spencer in October 1813. He was granted a ticket-of-leave in December, and next January his wife Sarah and their daughter Lydia arrived as free settlers in the Kangaroo.
In November 1814 Read advertised in the Sydney Gazette the establishment of his drawing school, the first in Australia, at 37 Pitt Street, Sydney. In addition to offering lessons in the 'polite and elegant art of drawing in its most elevated branches', he had for sale designs for embroidery, drawings and paintings of 'various subjects' and announced his readiness to execute miniatures and portraits. In a notice of February 1821 he described the drawings as 'views of various parts of New Holland … drawings of Birds, Flowers, Native Figures, etc.' Read taught drawing, painted portraits and genre works, and decorated colonial mansions, including Piper Castle and Government House, until late in the 1820s when, according to a survey of 'The State of the Fine Arts in New South Wales', published in the Sydney Gazette, 28 July 1829, he relinquished his profession and took up farming.
In 1816 Read petitioned Governor Lachlan Macquarie for mitigation of his sentence. He was conditionally pardoned in April 1819, and although he did not receive his absolute pardon until March 1825, he seems to have benefited from vice-regal patronage, and from commissions from wealthy settlers, for his petition of 1816 referred to 'indulgences received' and, he trusted, 'merited', at the governor's hands.
Richard Read gained a considerable reputation in the colony and by 1820 his talents were said to be 'too high to call for a panegyric'. He claimed that a series of portraits, framed and glazed, of Macquarie had been 'finished from the life'. Another portrait very well received was that of Michael Robinson, the 'Poet Laureate' of the colony. The group portrait of 'Mrs. Piper and her Children' at Vaucluse House, Sydney, was thought to be the work of Read, but has since been attributed to Augustus Earle.
All that is known of Read's artistic or social background before he arrived in the colony is that he had practised as a professional artist in London. In his first advertisement of 1814 Read pronounced himself 'History and Portrait Painter', but it was not until 1825 that he claimed to have been a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Read's assertion is difficult to accept, as in an advertisement of his drawing school, published in the Sydney Gazette in February 1821, he professed 'more than twenty-five years' experience of the Art', implying that his career had begun around 1796, four years after Sir Joshua Reynolds's death. Nevertheless Read's age at the time of his conviction—47 years—allows for the possibility that the artist had worked as an assistant in Reynolds's studio. The only known reference to a historical subject painted by Richard Read senior was made in 1819 in an anecdote published in the Sydney Gazette. Mr 'Reid' had presented a 'water painting' to an unnamed household in George Street, Sydney. The subject was taken from the eighteenth book of the Iliad, and happened to be placed above a tea tray purchased by the mistress of the house which also depicted an incident from the Iliad.
Read was listed in the indent of the Earl Spencer as 'Read', and signed himself thus in his petition to the governor. The teller of the Iliad tale spells the artist's name as 'Reid' and so does the journalist who gave an account of decorations painted for the Bachelors' Ball by Read in January 1820. A notice of 1822 telling of Read's commission to execute a half-length portrait of Macquarie uses the spelling 'Reed', but the painter's use of the spelling 'Reid' in his professional advertisements does not appear until 1825. This may possibly have been his method of distinguishing himself from a fellow colonial artist, apparently his son, Richard Read junior, who had arrived in Sydney in 1819 as a free settler, and who also lived in Pitt Street at the same time as his older namesake.
It is probable that Read left the colony with his family after he was pardoned. No record of later work or of his death can be traced in New South Wales.
Australian Dictionary of Biography written by Jocelyn Gray
