Louis Buvelot

Private collection, United Kingdom
Artarmon Galleries, Sydney (bears letter of authentication on reverse)
Private collection
Tom Silver Gallery, Melbourne
Purchased from the above in 1988

Overall work is in good condition with some minor 'fly' spots in sky (upper centre). Work is in contemporary gilded frame with decorative corners. Some minor scuffing to frame.
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When the colonial naval survey vessel Cumberland visited Port Phillip Bay in 1803, Lt James Flemming recorded 'wreck on the trees' along the River Yarra some six metres off the ground. Following the establishment of Melbourne in 1835, the reason for Flemming's flood marks soon became apparent: there were no fewer than six major inundations in the first ten years of European settlement. Regular flooding of the low-lying river plain would continue to be a matter of concern throughout the 19th century.  Following a particularly extreme event in 1863 a Board of Enquiry was established by the Commissioner of Public Works, leading eventually to a variety of flood mitigation works.

The Swiss artist Abram-Louis Buvelot arrived in Melbourne in 1865 and almost immediately started to make plein-air painting excursions along the Yarra River, beginning with city locations such as the Survey Paddock (now Richmond Park) before extending his range to Heidelberg, Templestowe and the Yarra Flats (Yarra Glen), and eventually even up into the hills at Fernshawe. Not only are Buvelot's watercolours and paintings a signal artistic achievement, landmarks in the conceptual and pictorial domestication of the Australian bush, but they also provide unique documentation of the history of the river in the 1860s and 1870s.

One of his first Australian oils, Winter morning near Heidelberg (1866, National Gallery of Victoria), clearly shows the impact of the notorious Yarra floods, both in the high, eroded riverbanks and more particularly in the large tree which lies uprooted and half-submerged in the water. The present work, formerly known as Settlers landing at river's bend, appears to be another image of flood devastation. In the foreground a battered hull, limbs of trees, timber planks and a woven basket lie buried in the silt. On the left, above a torrent-swept arc of sand, a man in a makeshift lean-to workshop is at work repairing a boat. At the centre of the picture, half a dozen people or more cluster on the riverside, ready to embark in (or having just disembarked from) a couple of small vessels.

While the precise date and location of this subject have not been firmly established, the broken and buried boats and the relatively narrow waterway suggest that it may depict the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River near its junction with the Yarra at Fisherman's (now Fishermen's) Bend. This area was settled by bay fishermen and their families from the 1850s, and Buvelot is known to have sketched their provisional dwellings and sheds not long after his arrival in the colony – as, for example, in Shanties at Fisherman's Bend (circa 1865-1867, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne).

With its fresh, bright atmosphere and its tantalising allusions to ecological and social history, this delicate watercolour is one of the finest and most intriguing from Buvelot's first years in Melbourne.