Title
Gloucester Street, The Rocks, Sydney
1918
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1918
- Media category
- Materials used
- etching, black ink with pale plate tone on ivory laid paper
- Edition
- 6/14
- Dimensions
- 30.2 x 19.9 cm platemark; 34.0 x 22.5 cm sheet
- Signature & date
Signed within plate to print l.r. "J R ASHTON".
Signed l.r., pencil "Julian Ashton.". Not dated.- Credit
- Purchased 1918
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 3319
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Julian Ashton
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
This etching of street life in the Rocks come from a second edition of fourteen, which Ashton published in 1918, printed in a blue/black ink, rather than the original sepia colour of 1893.
The Gallery acquired the print that year from Angus and Robertson, a firm of booksellers and publishers in Castlereagh Street. Despite the plate having been etched some twenty-five years earlier, its reissue for a new market indicates the popularity of the subject, as Sydney, especially the Rocks, underwent widespread slum clearances following outbreaks of bubonic plague in the first decades of the century. Nostalgia grew for a Sydney of the past, and artists including Lionel Lindsay and Sydney Ure Smith produced prints of 'old Sydney' well into 1910s, 20s and even 30s.
from Anne Ryan, 'Australian etchings and engravings 1880s–1930s from the Gallery's collection', AGNSW, Sydney 2007
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Harbour hymns, city songs: visions of Sydney from the collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 13 Jan 1990–11 Mar 1990
A Nation Imagined: The Artists of the Picturesque Atlas, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 12 Mar 2021–11 Jul 2021
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Anne Ryan, Australian etchings and engravings 1880s–1930s from the Gallery's collection, Sydney, 2007, 20 (colour illus.). cat.no. 25
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Kay Vernon., Harbour hymns, city songs: visions of Sydney from the collection, 'Introduction', Sydney, 1990. cat.no. 2
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