Colonial art puzzle ?

Who to believe?

These two sketches by famous colonial artist Nicholas Chevalier are clearly the same and are from reputable sources.

One copy is from the Victorian State Library with the caption “McMillan’s party clearing road to Wood’s Point” and was published by David Syme on 25 May 1864.

The other copy is from the National Library and there is handwriting on the sketch – “Splitters in the Dandenong Ranges”. The library catalogue says it was a wood engraving exhibited by the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, 1873.

Chevalier is known to have toured in Gippsland and the Dandenongs with Alfred Howitt as early as 1858. A study by Simon Gregg (𝘕𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘴 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘳: 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘖𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘺, 2011) suggests the artist encountered the now controversial explorer and pastoralist Angus McMillan around Dargo. This was during a journey Chevalier undertook with explorer Georg von Neumayer and his assistant Edward Brinckmann between November 1863 and February 1864, camping for a time together and enjoying a roast joint of wombat, according to von Neumayer’s account of the expedition. Chevalier sketched and later painted a number of works from this journey.

However, other accounts note McMillan’s exploratory work on the track would not begin until March 1864. So it is unlikely the sketch is contemporaneous with McMillan’s track making.

Equally, while Chevalier also created images of the Dandenongs, on balance it is unlikely this is actually one of them; more likely a bit of lazy captioning by whoever collated the woodcuts for the exhibition later in the 19th century.

Source: Mt Dandenong & District Historical Society