Title

Tasmania Illustrated, by J.S. Prout, Vol.1 Hobart Town [lithographs by J.S. Prout, printed by T. Bluett .

Author

Author not identified.

Source

Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney) 18 April 1831 - ongoing

Details

12 March 1846, page 2, column 3.

Publication date

12 March 1846

Type

Publication Review

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

TASMANIA ILLUSTRATED
BY J. S. PROUT. VOL. 1 HOBART TOWN
In turning over some illustrated works at Mr Ford’s the other day, we were pleased to stumble on a volume with the above title. We were gratified to find that the author of the artistical part of “Sydney Illustrated”, a series of sketches illustrative of the metropolis of the southern hemisphere, had not been idle since his departure from our shores; but that in a sister colony he had been exerting his energies and using his pencil, and struggling with the same sort of difficulties that almost baffled his efforts here, to make strangers acquainted with the pictorial features of his adopted country. “Sydney Illustrated” failed in answering the expectations of its author from the wretched quality of the paper on which it was printed. In the work before us there is a visible improvement in this respect. The paper is plate paper, but that is about the farthest extent we can go in its praise. It is about as common a specimen of plate paper as we have met with, but our friends in the mother country no doubt consider any sort of rubbish good enough for the colonies. Bad plate paper, however, is better for lithographic purposes than good newspaper, and the work under review, though inferior in appearance to some of M. Prout’s English publications which we have seen, is certainly superior in this respect to anything else he has published on this side of the globe. The work is printed in folio, or about the size, if we remember aright, of Harding’s Sketches at Home and Abroad. It consists of a title page and twelve views of Hobart Town or the neighbourhood. The title page is divided into five compartments, showing, we presume, different stages of the colonization of Van Diemen’s Land – the arrival of the earliest vessel on that coast – an encampment of the native blacks of the island, whose race is now almost extinct – colonists burning stumps and felling trees – and lastly the signs of traffic and commerce, and the chimneys and spires of a large and flourishing town. This ingenious title page may accordingly be looked upon as emblematical of the rapid advancement of Hobart Town; for the eye wanders in the same page from the dense forest inhabited by the savage, to the imposing town built and peopled by a race of Britons and their descendants. To dwellers in towns and cities in the mother country, which have crept, at a snail’s pace, in the slow progress of centuries, to their present condition, the railroad speed at which our Tasmanian neighbours have travelled in colonization may appear somewhat marvellous. But in this young metropolis, our organ of wonder is less active or less developed than the same protuberance on the craniums of our fathers and friends in the old world; for we live in an age which has witnessed a most important colony established out of a wild forest, at the very anpodes of the British isles, and a most flourishing city built, and filled with a population of 40,000 souls in the space of a little more than half a century. These are wonderful features in this age of wonders. But to resume. The sketches in the work before us are named –
1. The Female Factory, from Proctor’s Quarry
2. New Town, Mount Direction, &c.
3. Hobart Town, from the New Wharf
4. Cape Raoul
5. Cape Pillar
6. Fern Tree Valley
7. Hobart Town, from the New Town Road
8. Rest Down
9. Hobart Town, from Kangaroo Bay
10. The Queen’s Orphan Schools, New Town
11. Hobart Town, from Mount Nelson
12. Hobart Town, from the Government Paddock

The eye which has never beheld any but the tame scenery in the neighbourhood of Sydney will be agreeably surprised if not somewhat startled at the wild features of Van Diemen’s Land which the volume before us so graphically exhibits. The first print of the series, The Female Factory, which is a picture we like better perhaps than any of its companions, gives us a very fine piece of highland scenery. Mount Wellington rises in stately grandeur from the wooded valley where the Factory stands, rearing his rocky summit above the trees that creep far up his sides, and showing an outline and appearance so peculiar as to be …………… recognised on several of the succeeding views. But we are not now writing a description of the scene depicted. We wish merely to draw the attention of the public to the work which is well worthy of the patronage of all who have any interest in the sister colony, or any wish to advance the arts among us, and patronize the artist, who may still be regarded as one of ourselves. Those who are aware of the fidelity of Mr Prout’s pencil, and those who are familiar with the scenes represented in the present volume, need not be told that in the work before us his pencil has lost none of its character for truth. The artist has done all that could well have been accomplished without descriptive letter-press to give strangers a pretty correct notion of the appearance and situation of Hobart Town, and the vicinage. This was the object he had in view. For the sake of variety and interest, he has introduced some sea and river sketches as well as that wild woody spot on the mountain’s side called Fern Tree Valley; but Hobart Town itself was the chief object of illustration, and accordingly we have no fewer than five representations of the town, taken from different directions. Upon the whole, the volume under review is all that it was intended to be, and we trust it may meet with a ready sale. In Van Dieman’s Land, at least, we are pretty sure it will be eagerly sought for; but even here there are numbers of the citizens who have a sufficient interest in the sister colony to induce them to purchase so fine a pictorial representation of it. We said that the paper of Tasmania Illustrated was inferior to that used in Mr Prout’s English publications; but the drawing – the artistical part of the present work – is superior to anything we have ever seen produced by his pencil.

[Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1846, p.2, col.3; Hobart Town Courier, 28 March 1846, p.4, col.1.]