Hobart Town, on the River Derwent, van Diemens Land.

Title

Hobart Town, on the River Derwent, van Diemens Land.

Beautiful view of the capital city Hobart (formaly Hobart Town) in Tasmania, Australia.

dated 1830

Artist

Duncan (1803-1882)

Following training with the Havell brothers in London, Duncan established his own engraving studio. Primarily, he produced prints for Fores of Piccadilly. In 1826, he worked on an engraving project of maritime scenes based on paintings by William John Huggins, the official artist to the royal courts of King William IV and King George IV. Huggins became Duncan’s father-in-law when Duncan married his daughter Bertha Huggins. The couple had six sons and one daughter. The influences of both the Havell brothers and Huggins undoubtedly contributed to Duncan’s long and successful career as one of Britain’s leading marine watercolorists.

Historical Description

In 1642, the Dutchman Abel Tasman sailed along the south coast of Australia with the ship Heemskerck and the Fleute Zeehaen and discovered this area as well as New Zealand. The voyage was commissioned by the Governor General of the Dutch Indies, Anton van Diemen, after whom he named the newly discovered land (Van Diemens Land). However, Tasman assumed that it was a peninsula of the Australian continent. In 1772, the British explorer Tobias Furneaux went ashore in the southeast of the island. A year later it was also visited by the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne. In 1798, British Captain Matthew Flinders established that it was an island by discovering Bass Strait. Shortly after the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales on the Australian mainland, a French expedition landed on Tasmania in 1792 to explore the country. In 1803, the British established Risdon Cove on the Derwent River, the first permanent European settlement in what is now Tasmania. A year later, they abandoned it and founded Hobart Town (Hobart) in the south and Port Dalrymple (today George Town) in the north of the island. In 1825, Van Diemens Land became an independent colony from New South Wales.