View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens 1865

HENRY GRITTEN (c1818-1873)

View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens 1865

oil on canvas
60.0 x 90.0 cm
signed and dated lower left: Henry Gritten 1865

Provenance:
Private collection, Western Australia
Christie's, Melbourne, 27 April 1998, lot 52
Private collection, Adelaide

Exhibited:
Possibly Nath'l. Harris Auction Rooms, Melbourne, April 1865,
Valuable oil painting, View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens, by Gritten, the figures by Chevalier
Possibly First exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts,, Melbourne Public Library, November 1870,
as Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens, cat. no. 85

Reference:
The Illustrated Melbourne Post, with accompanying engraving by Robert Bruce,
The Botanical Gardens, with View of Melbourne in the Distance, 25 August 1865, pp.121-22
'The Illuminations in the City and suburbs', The Argus, 27 November 1867

Related Works:
[Incorrectly attributed to Henry Burn], The Botanical Gardens, with Government House, Melbourne [1863],
oil on board, 36.0 x 46.0 cm, Sotheby's, 23 August 1993, lot 216.
Reproduced as Botanical Gardens 1863, colour lithograph, drawn and printed by Francois Cogne
(after a painting by Henry Gritten) in Troedel, The Melbourne Album, 1863, pl. 1
Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens 1865, oil on canvas, 51.5 x 80.0 cm, Sotheby's, 27 November 1995, lot 23
Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens 1865, oil on canvas on plywood, 30.5 x 46.6 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens 1865, oil on canvas, 59.8 x 90.0 cm, Christie's, 27 April 1998, lot 52
View of Melbourne looking across the Yarra from the Botanical Gardens 1865, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 77.0 cm,
Deutscher and Hackett, 29 April 2009, lot 65
A view of Melbourne in front of the Botanical Gardens c1865, Sotheby's, 24 July 1988, lot 264
View of Melbourne, Victoria, from the Botanic Gardens 1866, oil on cardboard, 22.7 x 35.7 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest 1964
Melbourne 1867, oil on canvas, 61.0 x 92.3 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of the Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation, 2005, Foster's Collection, Sotheby's, 23 May 2005, lot 8
View of Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens 1867, oil on academy board, 30.5 x 45.5 cm, Deutscher-Menzies,
8 December 2004, lot 32
Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens 1867, oil on academy board, 35.6 x 25.7 cm, State Library of Victoria, Purchased 1891
Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens 1867, oil on canvas, 84.5 x 137.0 cm, State Library of Victoria

Estimate: $120000 - 160000

It would scarcely have been possible to have selected a finer site around the city for the purposes of a public reserve than at present occupied by the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. Situated on very undulating ground, with a frontage to the River Yarra, the situation is admirable and the natural advantages of the country have been in every possible manner improved by art.

                                                                                                The Argus, 25 August 1865

 

 

Arriving in Australia in 1853 in search of gold, the well-travelled English-born artist Henry Gritten quickly made his mark in Melbourne after settling in 1863.

 

Buoyed by rapid economic growth and momentous physical change, Melbourne in the 1860s embraced an influx of new artists who capitalised on the city’s growing prosperity by celebrating a city in transition and embracing local subjects now considered both worthy and picturesque. The Melbourne Botanical Gardens and areas adjacent to the Yarra and the Domain became a favourite motif for these artists and a popular place to visit, entertain and relax.

 

Formed initially from a small kernel of 2.5 hectares in 1846 (and now totalling 35 hectares), the Gardens featured prominently in the work of Henry Gritten, who in the space of four years produced a remarkable body of 11 known oils. Noted contemporaries such as J. H. Carse and Henry Burn also painted the Garden’s well-known views while later in the 1880s the Botanical Gardens featured in a series of picture albums produced by prominent Melbourne photographers including Charles Nettleton and Nicholas Caire.

 

One of the first major paintings Gritten produced, and exhibited in Melbourne in 1864, was a Botanical Gardens scene. He entered this painting in a major competition for a prize of £200, offered by the Melbourne Public Library and Fine Arts Committee, for the best painting on an Australian theme. The work was favourably reviewed ‑ ‘From Mr Gritten we have a creditable reproduction of one of the finest of Melbourne’s views, the exquisite landscape looking over Eastern Melbourne to the dividing range from the Botanical Garden.’1 Although Gritten was not successful in winning the prize, he followed up in 1865 with four new Botanical Garden works.

 

It was not uncommon for artists in the 19th century to produce multiple views of the same subject, with each one having its own character and subtle variations which distinguished each one from the other. View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens 1865, looks towards Melbourne and the Macedon Ranges in the distance, from an elevated position on the eastern flank near the Anderson Street Hill, South Yarra. It includes a group of a seated women, a girl and a younger boy enjoying their outing, dressed in their Sunday best.The significance of this work can be gauged by the fact that a full-page engraving was published in The Argus in 1865 with both the image and accompanying article extolling the virtues of the Gardens under the stewardship of German botanist Ferdinand Mueller.2

 

From his appointment as its first Director in 1857 until his controversial removal in 1871, Mueller was regarded as the driving force behind the Gardens. His overall plan, contemporaneous with Gritten’s picture, reveals his underlying philosophy: the garden was a site for edification and experimentation, containing diverse though orderly laid out habitats and walks and facilities for public enjoyment and entertainment such as bandstands, aviaries and ponds.

 

In each of the 1865 works, Gritten faithfully transcribes Mueller’s vision for the Gardens, including the rich panoply of trees and plants such as eucalypts, araucarias, cypresses (conifers) and other exotics including the large grey-green agave Americana. Prominence is given to the 3.9 metre-wide paths, with their fashionable meeting places and accommodating areas of shade. Gritten also made a point of contrasting this natural mecca with the industrious city of Melbourne pictured beyond. Many well-known landmarks are included such as St Paul’s Cathedral, a centrally located large spire of the Wesleyan Church in Lonsdale Street, alongside Parliament House and the Old Treasury building which had been completed in 1862, on the far right.Some artistic license has been taken with their placement, along with the course of the river, which at this stage still regularly overflowed its banks.

 

Similar in scale, though painted two years on, Melbourne 1867, is one of Gritten’s most accomplished and celebrated works. Part of the Elders IXL Collection, then Foster's Brewing, the painting is now held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Painted closer to the city than its 1865 counterpart, Gritten continued to celebrate the city’s growth and impressive skyline, while at the same time acknowledging the transition from the old to the new. Ferdinand Mueller’s program of improvements, including the planting of Blue Gums and conifers in Princes Bridge Reserve, can be clearly seen, contrasting against the gnarled, broken tree on the right. It is a poetic evocation of a particular time and place with the requisite attention for detail and fidelity to nature for which Gritten had become well known.

 

The Botanic Gardens continued to inspire artists including J. H. Carse. Like Gritten, Carse had arrived in Australia in the 1850s, settling in Melbourne in late 1868 or early 1869. He established a thriving practice, regularly exhibiting to favourable reviews and taking commissions in landscape and animal paintings from his Lonsdale Street base. While having its own particular charm, his 1868 painting View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens appears strongly indebted to Gritten and his Botanic Garden views.

 

Having already made his mark as an artist in England and the United States prior to coming to Australia, Henry Gritten became a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts. He showed three oils in the first exhibition in 1870, including Melbourne from the Botanic Garden, possibly an 1865 version which was purchased by Melbourne’s well known surveyor Robert Hoddle. Gritten died only three years later, leaving successive generations with valuable historical records as well as fine examples of the changing face of Melbourne and the city’s growing public spirit and largesse.

 

Footnotes

1. The Victorian Art Exhibition, The Argus, 21 December 1864

2. Although clearly based on the painting, the engraver also added some of his own touches, including a secondary group of figures on the left hand side.

 

Rodney James

BA (Hons); MA