Catalogue Notes
Although the subject is quite anomalous in terms of Gill’s oeuvre, this intriguing watercolour presents a singular visual record of late 19th century Australian imperialism in the Pacific. Painted around 1870 – the year after the Trustees of the Melbourne Public Library commissioned 40 reproductions of The Victorian Goldfields (1869, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne) – it is a relatively late example of S.T. Gill’s work, but predates the artist’s decline later in the decade.
Fiji was not officially annexed by the British crown until 1874. Prior to this, the warring feudal tribes of the islands had been slowly unifying under King Thakombau, but Thakombau was seriously indebted to the government of the United States. At the same time, the gold-rich colony of Victoria was looking for outlets for its surplus capital. Accordingly, in 1868 Thakombau entered into an agreement with the newly-established, colonially-based Polynesian Company, whereby he granted 200,000 acres of land to Australian shareholders in exchange for payment of the American debt. This charter led to what became known as ‘The Great Fiji Rush’, with the first contingent of settlers sailing from Melbourne in the ‘Alhambra’ in September 1870. (1)
The present work, evidently based on a locally-executed field sketch, shows one of the early Fijian agricultural settlements, at Savusavu, on the south coast of the island of Vanua Levu. (2) Both the four vernacular buildings with their steep-pitched thatched roofs, and the botanical signifiers of coconuts, banana trees and aloes identify the Pacific location, but the focus of the work is typically Gillian-domestic, emphasising in particular the central figure of the (presumed) proprietor strolling on the garden path. In the foreground, his wife, daughter and dog are engaged in some very English decorative planting, somewhat in the manner of the staffage in Gill’s early Months and Seasons series (circa 1841 – 1843, National Library of Australia, Canberra) or his views of Prospect House (1850, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide)
While the provenance of the work is obscure, it is conceivable that it was painted on commission for one of the Polynesian Company’s Melbourne promoters, perhaps as an encouragement to prospective settlers.
Dr David Hansen
(1) J.H. De Ricci, Fiji: Our New Province in the South Seas, Edward Stanford, London, 1875, pp. 255 – 274; ‘Melbourne to Fiji’, Rockhampton Bulletin and Central Queensland Advertiser, Rockhampton, 7 September 1870, p. 1
(2) Possibly the property of Capt. Alexander Barrack (1831 – 1889)
