View of the town of Sydney in New South Wales

Datec 1820

Object number00039838

DCMITypePhysicalObject

NamePunchbowl

MediumEnamelled porcelain

DimensionsOverall (including foot - external measurement): 170 × 445 mm
Overall (foot only - external measurement): 24 × 223 mm
Overall (Foot only - inner measurement): 24 × 217 mm

ClassificationsTableware and furnishings

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Peter Frelinghuysen through the American Friends of the Australian National Maritime Museum and partial purchase with the USA Bicentennial Gift funds

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DescriptionThe View of the Town of Sydney punchbowl was commissioned in Canton in about 1820 and provides a rare, and remarkably accurate, depiction of the view of Sydney Cove from the western shore.HistoryThis bowl's decorative enameling was produced by Chinese craftsmen copying from early published engravings. In the case of this bowl's exterior decoration or possibly original sketches in the case of the Indigenous people portrayed. The floral rim is very much in the Chinese tradition of 'famille rose' floral decorations. It bears an elaborate monogram that is all but invisible due to wear or deliberate erasure due to change of ownership. Deciphering this monogram may lead to a better understanding of where this piece of porcelain has been. The piece was likely owned by a wealthy and prominent citizen of early Sydney. At some point the bowl left Australia and disappeared until1932 when the British National Art-Collections Fund wrote to the Art Gallery of New South Wales inquiring whether a museum in Sydney would be interested in acquiring the piece. It would appear that there was no interest at the time, as it was in the early 1930's that the bowl was acquired by Mr. Frelinghuysen's parents. It disappeared from view again until 1988 when it went on display in a Chinese export porcelain exhibition in Newark, New Jersey. By then Mr. Frelinghuysen had inherited his mother's porcelain collection and lent the bowl as an anonymous lender. An astute journalist, Terry Ingram, spotted the bowl and wrote about it in his saleroom column of the Australian Financial Review. It was this article that assisted the Curator in tracking down the punchbowl for display and now finally for the Australian National Maritime Collection. The Frelinghuysen punchbowl is a companion piece to one held by the Mitchell Library. The Mitchell Library loaned their bowl to the Museum for the Pearl River Delta exhibition, and it was the first time the two had been on display together. SignificanceA number of factors make this punchbowl significant: together with the bowl in the State Library of NSW, it is the only known example of a panorama of Sydney on Chinese export ware; its early date also means it both records, and celebrates, the significant advances made in the British colony over the previous 20 years; and its presence in the collection is the result of an extraordinarily generous gift from a family that has played a key role in philanthropy.
The size of a punchbowl meant that it was an ideal surface for a detailed painting that records not just buildings and streetscapes, but also daily activities and even people. This punchbowl thus provides a remarkably accurate depiction of Sydney at a time when a number of projects had been realised by Governor Macquarie, including major additions to Government House, and construction of an octagonal stone house for his boatman, Billy Blue. It predates the fortification of Bennelong Point (commencing in December 1817) and of Dawes Point (1818). The panorama is also a reminder that although Europeans had taken their lands, polluted their water supply and introduced devastating diseases, First Nations peoples continued to live alongside them. Aboriginal men, women and children populate the foreshore, and can be seen fishing from small canoes in the harbour.
Although it is not possible to know who commissioned the bowls, and why, nonetheless the fact that the Chinese painters so accurately depicted the Sydney foreshores suggests that they were intended as a record of the colony. With one documenting the view from the eastern shore, and the other the view from the western, the bowls provide clear evidence of the progress that had been made since 1788. As the French navigator, Louis-Claude de Saulces de Freycinet wrote in 1819, on arriving in Sydney after a 17-year absence, ‘I expected to find this year a larger town … but not one in a state utterly different from that which prevailed when I left … I was amazed when … I was able to gaze on the impressive sight of a European city flourishing in the heart of an almost primitive land’.
Finally, the museum’s bowl was purchased in England in the early 1930s by Adeline and Peter Frelinghuysen for their Chinese export-ware collection. Adeline had acquired her interest in the decorative arts from her parents, Henry and Louisine Havemeyer who, having built a substantial fortune through sugar refining, became avid collectors of contemporary art, particularly of the French impressionists. Following their death, 1,967 works were donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the time the largest bequest it had ever received. In her lifetime, Adeline Frelinghuysen built up substantial collections of Chinese export-ware, 17th and 18th century English furniture and antique textiles. Her son, Peter Frelinghuysen II, generously donated the punchbowl to the museum with the assistance of the American Friends of the Australian National Maritime Museum and partial purchase with USA Bicentennial Gift funds. These associative connections with significant collectors and benefactors are important in the biography of this rare object, including its survival and permanent location in Sydney, the town depicted in the painting.