New South Wales. View of Sydney from the West Side of the Cove No. 1 [and] No. 2

A rare panoramic view of Sydney Harbour. John Eyre arrived in New South Wales in 1801, transported for seven years for housebreaking. The first of his drawings which can be dated was done in 1804 soon after he received his conditional pardon. His best known work is this majestic panorama; the Sydney he portrays (fancifully) is a neat and orderly town where the Aboriginal inhabitants live with dignity and "peace, order and good government reign..." (The Antipodes Observed, 64). The focus is very much on the Harbour where the maritime activity was the dominating element in Sydney at the time. Eyre produced four images: two views from the West side of the Cove and two from the East; they were at least partly intended to illustrate David Dickinson Mann's "Present Picture" of 1811, but are hardly ever to be found with copies of the book. Offered here are the two views from the West.

Eyre's original painted panorama was exhibited in London in 1810 and the aquatint engravings were published soon after. The paintings had been taken back to England by the convict Mann, when he returned to England after his pardon on the same ship as Colonel George Johnston. In fact, Mann was one of the men who gave evidence at Johnston's court martial in 1811. Mann arranged for the exhibition of Eyre's paintings, and then their publication. They represented the first such panorama of Sydney to be shown in London, and also the first to be published.