Joseph LYCETT

English (c. 1775)–1828
worked in Australia 1814–22

Joseph Lycett was a convict artist who spent eight years in the colonies (1814–1822), where he executed numerous watercolours of landscapes, homesteads, the Aboriginal people and botanical subjects. Trained as a portrait and miniature painter,1 his meticulously executed watercolours remain some of the most distinctive images of the developing colonies and Indigenous peoples of the early colonial period.

The majority of Lycett’s works date from the four years after 1819 when he returned to Sydney following his incarceration in Newcastle for his second convicted offence for forgery.2 He used these drawings, as well as those of other artists, as the basis for a series of printed views that he commenced following his return to England in 1822. Published in twelve-monthly instalments between 1824 and 1825, Views in Australia comprised forty-nine aquatint plates of the scenery of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land that were issued plain or hand-coloured. The publication included maps, an introductory text describing the ‘discovery, settlement and progress of these Colonies’,3 and descriptive captions for each plate that emphasised the development and prosperity of the settlements as well as the fertility and potential of the land. Issued at a time when the colonies were moving towards becoming free-settler societies, Lycett’s publication was clearly aimed at enticing emigration and investment.

One of two views of the settlement of Hobart, Distant view of Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, from Blufhead, 1825, was intended by the artist to portray ‘the wild Scenery in the rear of Hobart Town; and, more particularly, the majestic Mountain which is … one of the most stupendous works of Nature’.4 Lycett’s images in Views in Australia are framed within the prevailing conventions of the Picturesque tradition with its taste for rugged and awe-inspiring scenery. Even so, while the swirling clouds and towering form of Mount Wellington in this print are evocative of ‘the wild scenery of Australia in her pristine state’,5 the other elements of the composition point to the taming and cultivation of the land that have accompanied settlement: the cleared timber, the pasturelands sloping down to the river, the ships upon the Derwent and the two men in the foreground, pausing from their hunt, to admire the view.

1 The records of the ship on which Lycett was transported, the General Hewitt, describe Lycett as portrait painter and miniature painter from Staffordshire (see the entry on Lycett by J. Hoorn & E. Imashev in The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, ed. J. Kerr, Melbourne, 1992, p. 482).

2 Lycett was transported for forgery, but upon arrival in Sydney was granted a ticket of leave, and found employment in the police department. A second offence for forgery in 1815 saw him sent to Newcastle, where he remained until the end of 1818 or early 1819 (see Dictionary of Australian Artists; and J. Turner, Joseph Lycett: Governor Macquarie’s Convict Artist, Newcastle, 1997, pp. 94–5).

3 Advertisement for Views in Australia, first published in June 1834, and included in bound volumes of the set.

4 From the caption accompanying the print in Views in Australia, n.p.

5 From the advertisement for Views in Australia.

Cathy Leahy