WALTER STEVENSON 19th century (AFTER WILLIAM LIGHT)

SURVEYING BRIG RAPID IN RAPID BAY (AFTER WILLIAM LIGHT) 1876

watercolour

signed, inscribed and dated 'Walter Stevenson, London 1876' verso

23 X 35CM

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Adelaide

EXHIBITED
(possibly) Relics exhibition, Old Colonists’ Association, Banqueting Hall, Town Hall, Adelaide, December 1886

LITERATURE
(possibly) ‘Old Colonist Relics’, The South Australian Register, Adelaide, 10 January 1887, p. 3
David Elder, Art of William Light, The Corporation of the City of Adelaide, Adelaide, 1987, p. 102

An explorer, a sailor, a soldier and an accomplished draughtsman, Colonel William Light produced some of South Australia’s earliest works of art. Captaining the brig Rapid from England to Australia in 1836 on a mission to find a suitable location for the principal city in the colony and during his brief sojourn on the continent until his untimely death, Light captured the nascent State’s early progress. His watercolours of the tent cities in the 'Land of Promise' are not only topographically precise but also artistically poetic. Referring to Light’s View of Yankalilla (Art Gallery of South Australia) Jane Hylton rightly stated how Light “successfully combined the detached observation of a topographer with the sensitive response of an artist moved by what he is depicting”(1).

Surveying Brig Rapid in Rapid Bay is a rare work in which Light is more concerned with capturing the mood, the atmosphere and the beauty of the brig and the 'little paradise'(2) seen here in the distance through the storm, than rendering a surveyor’s objective view of the coastline. Light described the dramatic weather the day that inspired the painting in his journal noting “a sudden change in wind to the N.N.E., with very sultry and oppressive air; in a few minutes, thunder clouds appeared very near, from the westward; without any previous indications a sudden breeze from the westward sprang up, and a high sea immediately coming home... several severe flashes of lightning with thunder [came] close to us, and the rain fell heavy… ”(3)

Light’s watercolours are very rare, due in part to the January 1839 fire that destroyed many of his Australian works. It is unlikely that the Brig Rapid was a victim in the incident as the work is recorded to have been shown in an exhibition in Adelaide in 1848(4). The inscription on the reverse of this work states that it was “Copied from the original drawing by William Light…London” which may indicate that Stevenson was vis-à-vis with the original watercolour and it may in fact be held in an English collection - certainly plausible considering that many of Light's works were sent to London for reproduction.

This faithful transcription by the forgotten artist Walter Stevenson is the earliest known homage to one of Light’s best known works and until the original re-surfaces, it remains an important historical record of South Australia’s colonial origins.

Petrit Abazi

(1) Jane Hylton, South Australia Illustrated: Colonial Painting in the Land of Promise, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2012, p. 34
(2) David Elder, William Light’s Brief Journal and Australian Diaries, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1984, p. 72-73
(3) Jane Hylton, p. 35
(4) David Elder, Art of William Light, The Corporation of the City of Adelaide, Adelaide, 1987, p. 102