• Title
  [Lady Nelson, ca. 1800] / painted by Baker
• Call number
  ML 590
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  ca. 1800
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Paintings
• Reference code
  430327
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 painting - oil on canvas - 43.0 x 64.2 cm
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  The Lady Nelson was commissioned in 1799 to survey the coast of Australia. It left Portsmouth on 18 March 1800 and arrived at Sydney on 16 December 1800 after having been the first vessel to reach the east coast of Australia via Bass Strait. The Lady Nelson's survey work commenced shortly after its arrival at Sydney, initially in the Bass Strait area, where it was involved in the European discovery of Port Phillip, on the Victorian coast. It was later involved in the establishment of settlements on the Derwent River and at Port Dalrymple in Tasmania, Newcastle and Port Macquarie in New South Wales, and Melville Island off the north coast of the continent.
• Collection history
  The painting may have been commissioned by Captain (later Admiral) John Schank who was responsible for the design of the sliding keels with which the Lady Nelson was fitted. The painting was bequeathed by his maternal grandson Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Alexander Schank, who died at Dawlish in England in 1920. H. A . Schank's widow, Mrs M. M. Schank, presented the painting to the Mitchell Library in 1922.
• Scope and Content
  The painting depicts His Majesty's Armed Survey Vessel the Lady Nelson with her boarding nets in position.
  
  Possibly the painting depicts the departure of the Lady Nelson from Dunnose, Isle of Wight, on 18 March 1800. Britain and France were then at war and the Lady Nelson was obliged to join a convoy of East Indiamen for the initial stage of its voyage to Australia. This would explain the boarding nets.
• Access Conditions
  
  Access via appointment
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Creator died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Published Information
  The painting was reproduced in BHP History of Bass Strait series No.5
• Description source
  
  Identity of vessel, history of ownership of painting, and information relating to the Lady Nelson, provided to library by Michael Ellery in 2015.
• General note
  
  Digital order no:a128446
  Transferred from V* to Pict. Storage, Jan. 1967.
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Signed at lower right of image, "[J or L?] Baker". Beneath this is a faded inscription, " .. ( Nau...".
• Attributions / conjectures
  
  The initial of the artist is difficult to discern. This work is possibly by James R. Baker, English oil painter who worked around the dockyards at Woolwich and Portsmouth.
  
  Reference:
  Dictionary of marine artists / by D. Brewington. Salem, Mass. : Peabody Museum of Salem, 1982.
• Name
  Lady Nelson (Ship)
  
• Subject
  Ships--Pictorial works.
  
• Topic
  brigs
  

View Media Files

2.

Show more