Henry GRITTEN

English 1818–73
worked in Australia 1853–73

Henry Gritten, the son of a London picture dealer, began painting at the age of fourteen. He exhibited prolifically at the Royal Academy, the British Institute, the Society of Artists and elsewhere between 1835 and 1849. In 1848 he moved to New York, painting in the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains and exhibiting with the National Academy of Design in New York. His repertoire was large and included European views he replicated throughout his career. In his Australian oeuvre there are many views of Sydney, where he worked in the mid 1850s; Hobart, where he lived from 1856 until at least 1859; and Melbourne, to which he returned in 1863. He had a ready market for the Melbourne views and exhibited them regularly between 1864 and 1870. They all have a strong family resemblance and are all taken from the south, looking over the city to the Great Dividing Range on the horizon. But no two are the same: Gritten took pains to change his foregrounds and to acknowledge the changing skyline of gold-flushed Melbourne. The sizes vary from 22.7 x 37.5 cm (in the collection of National Gallery of Victoria) to 84.5 x 137.0 cm (LaTrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria).

Gritten’s viewpoint is usually from the middle of the Botanic Gardens. The precinct was devoted to pleasure grounds, with beds of mixed indigenous and exotic plants and trees. There was a bandstand nearby, where large crowds assembled in the summer months to listen to the band of the 40th Regiment. The view of the city from this spot was said to be the finest in inner-suburban Melbourne. It encompassed the lagoon and Yarra floodplains in the middle distance, and the towers and spires of the city in the far distance. The Treasury, Parliament House and St Patrick’s Cathedral can be seen on the right.

Terence Lane