IN 2002, with generous funding provided by the State Library of Victoria Foundation, the La Trobe Picture Collection was able to purchase a painting titled Robert Hoddle Dec. 1845 near Source of the Yarra Yarra River Starvation Creek. This title is painted on the back of the canvas in a contemporary hand, and the front is signed and dated “Henry Short 1860'.

This is a curious work, an historical painting of an event which had taken place fifteen years earlier. History painting was a genre used by artists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to commemorate and dramatize scenes of national triumph. These were “message” paintings, with a high moral tone, because the works were mainly painted as commissions for official patrons and intended for official display.1

Professional artists working in colonial Australia were familiar with this genre. Some of the historical subjects that colonial artists considered worth memorialising in the 1860s included the landing of the first white settlers in Melbourne, the “treaty” of John Batman with the Aboriginal people, and the meeting of William Buckley with the first settlers of the colony. The departure of the Burke and Wills exploring expedition in grand style from Royal Park in 1861 was the ideal subject for historical painting, and the tragic demise of the expedition only gave additional impetus to it as a subject for the genre.

In the 1860s, landscape painting dominated the subject matter of colonial artists.2 Many of these paintings could more properly be referred to as “historical landscape painting” where the two genres have been blurred together. The landscape dominates the historical events occurring in the picture, or the landscape itself becomes the historical subject, as a grand and dramatic vision or an arcadian pastoral. Colonial artists in America used the landscape in the same fashion, thus aspiring to have their landscape painting recognized with the same significance as historical painting.3

The concept of artists depicting events they cannot have witnessed was a more widely embraced idea before the advent of photography and the development of the modern perception of images as “witness” to the actual event. Artists painting historical subjects often attempted to give accuracy to their work by using contemporary sketches if these existed. However, at best, these works should always be acknowledged as being based on first hand sources and not as documentary representations. The paucity of contemporary visual records from Victoria's early colonial period has allowed works completed many years later to gain the status of historical documents.4

Henry Short was a minor artist working in Melbourne in the 1850s, mainly known for his paintings of still life arrangements of flowers and fruit. His best work is his memorial painting to the Burke and Wills expedition, the curious Our Adopted Country. To the Memory

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Henry Short, artist. Robert Hoddle Dec. 1845 near Source of Yarra Yarra River Starvation Creek. 1860. Oil on canvas, 77 × 65 cm. H2002.119. La Trobe Picture Collection.

Robert Hoddle, artist. [Waterfall 1845] Watercolour. PX^*D319/6. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

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of the Lamented Heroes of the Victorian Exploration 1861, a commemoration of the tragic Burke and Wills expedition, which is also in the La Trobe Picture Collection.

It was the association with Robert Hoddle (1794–1881), however fanciful, which interested the Library to purchase another work by Short. Robert Hoddle was the first Surveyor-General of Victoria and a major figure in the early colony. Hoddle himself was a competent draughtsman and his pencil and water-colour drawings of his field trips in early Victoria are considered to provide contemporary records of the late 1830s and 1840s in the colony.5

Henry Short (1807–1865) arrived in Melbourne with his family in the great wave of migration associated with the discovery of gold in the 1850s. It is most likely after the family arrived in 1852 that they went to the gold diggings, but within two years they were living in Melbourne and both Henry and his eldest son William were exhibiting their paintings for sale.

The family fortune did not improve from mining, so Henry returned to his previous profession as a painter. In the young colony this must have been a brave, almost foolhardy, undertaking. Contemporary artists and critics all comment on the lack of art patrons and the “slender demand for art'.6

To support his career, Short appears to have made use of the commercial opportunities available to him. He exhibited his work at all available public forums, and sought patronage from official figures. When his works failed to sell at public art exhibitions, he organised to dispose of them by art unions.

In 1854 he offered two oil paintings for sale at the Melbourne Exhibition held in conjunction with the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. The two works are listed as The Bather and The Lucky Gold Digger, both in keeping with the theme of the exhibition as a celebration of the talents of the colony. The Bather is described as being “framed in New South Wales cedar”, while the title of The Lucky Gold Digger alone indicates the celebratory colonial nature of the work.

Short exhibited six works at the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art. Five paintings are listed in the colonial art section. Their subjects are fruits and flowers with such titles as Basket of Flowers and Fruit in an Australian November and Colonial Fruits and Flowers in January with a quotation from the English poet Spenser attached: “There is a continual harvest here.” Another work listed in the catalogue and shown in the Crimean gallery, was Portrait of a Digger, which is possibly the work previously exhibited in 1854 as The Lucky Gold Digger.

Short's flower pieces and still life designs were favourably received, and doubtless he received some patronage from Melbourne society. For example, one of the works in the 1856 catalogue, Australian Beauties in February, is listed as being “From the Collection of Professor McCoy”, the Director of the Museum of Victoria at that time.

Short exhibited three works in the “First Exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts” held 1857. Uncharacteristically, two works are titled briefly in the catalogue as Fruit Piece, and the third, Gatherings in May. There was extensive press coverage of this exhibition, but the mention of Short's work was as brief as his titles. In the closing notice of the exhibition, the critic for the Argus noted “With regard to the oil-paintings and water-colour drawings not hitherto noticed: we may allude in terms of commendation to some of Mr. Clarke's(sic) contributions, the flower-pieces of Mr. Short, Mr. C. Norton's “Victorian Insects'.7

Short contributed to the regular Fine Arts Exhibitions held at Charles Summers” studio from 1860. In 1861 he donated one of his own works to the Trustees of the Public Library for inclusion in the Museum of Art. This attractive still life painting Fish, Fruit and Flowers, is now part of the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Donation of works — by artists themselves or by patrons — was virtually the only means by which colonial artists could have their work included in the new gallery. After its formation in the 1860s, the trustees bought only a five works by colonial artists in this decade.8

In common with many artists, Short was struggling to find a market for his work in the colony. In 1858 three of his paintings were included in the prizes for the Ballarat Art Union. Their titles were Civilization, Contemplation and Beauties of Australia.9 The art union, which was in reality a raffle, was the “device frequently resorted to by colonial artists with unsold works'.10

In May 1862 Short organised an art union for three of his paintings. This was advertised in the Argus as “Art Union - Explorers Immortalized, Men and Produce of Victoria” and as being “Under His Excellency's Patronage”. Short had written personally to Governor Sir Henry Barkly asking for his support with the art union, and was no doubt gratified when the Governor accepted to take two shares at a total cost of two guineas.11

The major prize in the art union was his memorial painting to the Burke and Wills expedition, Our Adopted Country. To the Memory of the Lamented Heroes of the Victorian Exploration 1861. Short's choice of subject matter would appear shrewd, as Melbourne was enthralled by news of the expedition and by its tragic ending. However, many other colonial artists were also producing historical pictures depicting the expedition itself, or tragic aspects of its demise. None of these early works, by artists such as Henricus van den Houten or William Strutt, appear to have found a ready market.12

Short's forte is acknowledged to be still life painting in a seventeenth century Dutch style.13 He also created figure paintings, such as The Bather. However, in 1860 he made a departure from his standard subject matter and exhibited a landscape painting in the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts at Charles Summers” studio titled Shoalhaven Gullies. The following year, 1861, he exhibited two more landscapes, Kangaroo Ground between Bong Bong and Illawarra NSW and Native Mia Mia Encampment, NSW, as well as three still life works in his typical style.

The critics were scathing of his foray into landscape painting. One of them wrote of his entry in the 1860 exhibition:

The reviews of the following year's exhibitions were only marginally kinder.

The notice announcing the opening of the 1861 Victorian Art Exhibition in the Age was altogether kinder, making mention first of the works of Mr E. Von (sic) Guerard who was exhibiting ten works, and Mr N. Chevalier, exhibiting nine works. The reviewer then comments on other works:

In 1862 Short made his final entry in the Fine Arts Exhibitions where he exhibited works from all his genres. There was a botanical piece titled Flowers from the Botanical Gardens, Melbourne, another landscape painting titled The Source of the Yarra Yarra and two other works titled Shnappers and Fish Ho! The critic for the Age commented:

This reviewer obviously found the landscape, The Source of the Yarra Yarra, beneath mention. This landscape work is the work recently purchased by the Picture Collection, albeit with one of Short's typically expanded titles. It is true this is not a great work. In this painting, the artist has depicted the surveyor sitting on a rock sketching, while other members of the party make camp around him. The initials “RH 1845” are blazed into a prominent tree in the foreground. A river, dense forest with tree ferns and a waterfall fill the background of the painting. The figures are poorly defined and the landscape depicts a dark and gloomy waterfall with trees looming over the edge of the ravine.

It is puzzling that Short gives so exact a title to the work, Robert Hoddle Dec. 1845 near Source of the Yarra Yarra River Starvation Creek. Starvation Creek is a tributary of the Yarra River near Warburton, and Hoddle was there in December 1844, not 1845. A list of waterfalls in the Upper Yarra Valley includes a set of falls on Starvation Creek, but it is not large enough to be marked on topographical maps.19

Robert Hoddle (1794–1881) spent the summer of 1844–45 in the Upper Yarra region of Victoria completing the survey of the Yarra River with the aim of finding its “source'. His travels were hampered by wet weather and problems with staff and equipment. In his field book he describes a tributary of the Yarra as Starvation Creek because of lack of feed for his stock. On 21 December 1844 he notes in his field book: “Removing Camp back to pasture, the Horses and Bullocks being without food for two nights'.20

After a quick trip back to Melbourne for Christmas Day, Hoddle pushed on up the Yarra for the rest of the summer. His field book of 31 March 1845 marks a “Water Fall” on a “branch of Yarra'. It is most probably the main drop and cascade now known as Main Falls and the Five Falls on the aptly named Falls Creek, a tributary of the upper Yarra River. This set of falls was a popular tourist destination in the 1930s, but the area is now managed by Melbourne Water as part of the Upper Yarra catchment area and all access is understandably restricted.21

Access to the terrain in the Upper Yarra catchment area has not improved since Hoddle's time. In the 1930s when tourists could walk in to view the falls, access was from the ridge above the falls via a zigzag track descending to them. A contemporary guide book noted: “The gorge in which the falls are situated was referred to as a “Black Hole” by early prospectors as it was so steep that the falls could be heard but were hard to see or gain access to, only a few bushmen and surveyors were aware of the secret.'22

Field work to examine the site of the falls and to compare it with Short's view is not an option. In 2004, I had the good fortune to visit the upper part of this falls system, the Five Falls Cascade, as a guest of Melbourne Water. Access to the top falls was possible, but to walk into the lower falls would take over a day's travel. To preserve the pristine nature of the water catchment area, overnight trips are not permitted.23

It is thus an academic fancy to wish to contemplate the real falls and compare them with Short's “historical” version of the area. In choosing this particular historical moment to paint, Short was memorialising the work of Robert Hoddle as surveyor, and he chose a seminal moment, that time when Hoddle was actually at the source of the Yarra River, the lifeblood of Melbourne.

It is most unlikely that Short visited any of the landscapes he chose to paint. His entry in The Dictionary of Australian Artists and Engravers indicates his landscapes of New South Wales were “presumably recorded on a visit to New South Wales'.24 This seems unlikely, and there is no evidence that he had the financial backing to travel. His address in all contemporary sources is given as Fitzroy or North Melbourne, and his death notice mentions his address as Carlton Gardens, all in Victoria.

It is interesting that Henry Short did not choose to paint the environs of Melbourne, such as Dight's Falls or the Yarra River, which would have been accessible to him and were painted by so many of his contemporary artists. His son, William Short, produced a number of works showing the Melbourne surrounds, such as Sketch on the Yarra exhibited in the 1861 Fine Arts Exhibition held at Charles Summers” studio in Melbourne. It may therefore be surmised that Henry Short did not wish to “poach” his son's subject matter.

As the art historian and curator Jennifer Phipps has commented: “Short tended to give his paintings high sounding titles'.25 While there is a romanticism and idealism in the titles of his carefully composed still life paintings, they are meticulously realistic, however fanciful the overall composition. This romanticism is evident in the composition of his memorial to the Burke and Wills expedition. It is composed as an allegory, a genre rarely used in colonial painting.26

As previously mentioned, Hoddle himself was a competent draughtsman, and his sketches and water-colour paintings showing scenes from his surveying journeys and other travels in New South Wales and Victoria are held by National and State collections.

Hoddle spent the long years of his retirement from 1853 to his death in 1881 at a house on the corner of Bourke and Spencer Streets with his much younger second wife, Fanny, and family. Hoddle was in effect an elder statesmen of the colony, and his astute involvement in land sales in the developing city meant that he was a comparatively wealthy man. Hoddle had always valued intellectual pursuits, in his retirement “he played the organ and flute, and made translations from the Spanish'.27 He also added an east wing to the house for his library and picture collection and to display his collection of historical treasures.28

The full scale of his library and collection of painting and objets d'art will probably never be known. A sense of it can be understood from the listing from the sale held by auctioneer Leonard Joel in 1960 on behalf of the Sage family, to whom the bulk of Hoddle's effects had passed after his death and his wife's remarriage.29 The sale notes a number of water-colours by Robert Hoddle himself, an “Oil painting by J. Clarke (sic) from a drawing of Robert Hoddle”, at least two oil paintings and a water colour by “Henry Gritton (sic)”, and a number other works listed as “interesting old oil painting'.

Despite obvious typographical or transcription errors it would appear that Hoddle owned works by colonial artists such as Thomas Clark (1814–1883) and Henry Gritten (1818–1873). As has been described, artists took the subject of some of their oil paintings from Hoddle sketches. Two works by Henry Gritten known to have been based on Hoddle sketches are Shoalhaven Gullies, 1870, in the La Trobe Picture Collection, and Kiama Illawara N.S.W”, 1860, in the National Library of Australia Collection. The painting of Kiama is inscribed “Kiama Illawarra NSW / Sketched by R Hoddle 1830'.30

In a letter to the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870 Henry Gritten notes that of the two works he sends to that to that year's exhibition, View of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens was “The property of Robt Hoddle Esq'.31

A pair of works by Thomas Clark in the State Library of New South Wales collection are unidentified landscape pictures, both inscribed “From a drawing by R. Hoddle Esq.'32 The works are undated and show topographical views of coastal or tableland scenery, with figures in the foreground. They are very reminiscent of sketches done by Hoddle on his survey trips in the southern tablelands and south coast of New South Wales.

Included in a group of water colours by Robert Hoddle recently purchased by the State Library of Victoria was a watercolour by Thomas Clark inscribed Sealers Cove, Wilsons Promontory by Robert Hoddle Painted by Thomas Clark 1861. The provenance of this group of pictures makes it most likely they were once owned by Robert Hoddle.

No record of Robert Hoddle exhibiting his own watercolours or drawings during his lifetime has been located. However, it appears that he made his own sketches available to artists, and he may have taken a personal interest in their careers.

To date there is no evidence to confirm that Hoddle commissioned artists to paint views after his own sketches. As at least three artists are known to have based work after Hoddle's own sketches, they may have fostered his patronage by using them, or they might simply have used his work to provide accuracy in the images they were painting.

As the art historian Tim Bonyhady discusses in Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801–1890, the colonial art market was affected by the colonists” preference for European art and “restricted them to subjects with which European artists could not compete, most notably portraits and landscape paintings'.33

But how were artists to get out to view this landscape? Both Clark and Gritten painted the urban fringes of Melbourne or views of the city. These showed the landscape they could access with ease. Favourite subjects included views of the outskirts of Melbourne, such as St Kilda, Jackson's Creek at Sunbury and Merri Creek near Dights Falls.

Gritten had neither the financial ability nor the good health to undertake the arduous sketching trips. When an engraving based on his View on the Merri Creek was published in the Illustrated Melbourne Post the paper commented: “Mr Henry Gritten, is especially happy in his treatment of Victorian scenery, and were he to go a little further afield in his choice of subjects might rival the fame of Von (sic) Guerard and Chevalier.'34

The work of von Guerard (1811–1901) and Chevalier (1828–1902) featured prominently in the landscape genre during the fine arts exhibitions of the 1860s. Their names dominate the exhibition catalogues both by the numbers of works they exhibited, but undoubtedly in the quality of their work as well. Both had travelled with government geophysicist Georg Neumayer on expeditions in Victoria during the early 1860s. They used the sketches they had made in the field for their landscape works. However, both artists found the journeys involved considerable physical hardship and discomfort.35

Such heroic example could not have been followed by Short, Gritten or Clark, all of whom lacked the financial backing and robust health necessary for arduous trips. Clark did make sketching tours of the Western District of Victoria and painted views of the Wannon Falls, which were easily accessible from the road.36

When examined together, the titles of Henry Short's known landscapes, Shoalhaven Gullies, Sunrise Kangaroo Ground between Bong Bong and Illawarra NSW, Robert Hoddle Dec. 1845 near Source of the Yarra Yarra River Starvation Creek and even Native Mia Mia Encampment, NSW, are all suggestive of the titles inscribed by Robert Hoddle on his own watercolours.

It seems likely Short painted these works based on field sketches or water-colours by Hoddle. The State Library of New South Wales collection has two watercolours by Hoddle showing waterfalls. One is positively identified in Hoddle's hand as “Ginninginninderry Water Fall near the Murrumbidgee 1835”, the other work is untititled but dated 1845.37 It is entirely speculation to consider that this unidentified waterfall sketch could have been used as the basis of Short's picture. However, there are some compositional similarities: in both, the surveyor is seated in the foreground; an “RH 1845” is prominently blazed on the large tree to the right; a large waterfall is prominent in the background. In the watercolour, the surveyor is seated in the foreground; however the figure is not shown sketching but is seated at the entrance to his tent and has a dog at his side. As in Short's painting, tree ferns are prominent vegetation at the base of the waterfall.

In the evidence to hand it appears that painters unable to access remote landscapes or wishing to use the historical painting genre used first-hand witnesses, such as Hoddle, to provide some factual basis for their own interpretations. Gritten took this process even further and is credited with being the first colonial painter to use a landscape photograph for his painting Granite Boulders at the Black Hills near Kyneton, 1867.38

One has to feel for Henry Short. He emigrated with his family to a land of promise and appears to have found nothing but hard toil. His talents were best suited to salon and still-life paintings. His shift to landscape painting and historical works was a vain attempt to produce what the colonial market wanted. Despite his best endeavours to cater for public interest, his work was not greatly successful. It is true his talents were modest, and much of his work derivative. However, historical painting, due to its inspirational and educative role, is best suited as public art.39 In this context, it is interesting to note that Short's gamble in memorialising a great moment in the history of the colony — the location of the source of the Yarra River — has finally come to fruition and his work is now part of the national heritage in the State Library of Victoria collection.