- Museum number
- Oc2006,Drg.68
- Description
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Drawing; watercolour, from a collection of nineteen Thomas Bock portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal people held by the British Museum. It depicts, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, wearing a neck-ornament and skin garment. She has scarification on her right arm.
- Production date
- 1833 (late (see curatorial comment))
- Dimensions
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Height: 28.50 centimetres
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Width: 22 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
-
"16. Fine coloured drawing of a Tasmanian [female symbol] (grave looking). Has a skin dress and Wheals, but is not ochred. By Bock. Bock was an artist who lived at Hobarton. He was most scrupulously accurate. I have some account of him in a letter from his son in the portfolio 'Galerie Anthropologique' [held in the British Museum's Centre for Anthropology]." From MS145 'Catalogue of Drawings, Paintings & other objects of an Ethnological Nature', Royal Anthropological Institute Archive.
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In 1965 NJB Plomley published a paper which attempted to untangle the complex provenance of the different collections of Thomas Bock’s (1790-1855) portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, including those held by the British Museum. The British Museum’s seventeen Bock portraits were acquired from Dr J Barnard Davis’ collection in 1883. Plomley (1965:15) argued that Davis acquired this set of portraits before 1867 from Thomas Bock’s son, Alfred Bock (1835-1920), and that they are copies of Thomas Bock’s work, executed by Alfred. However, based on a close study of the surviving documentation and its relationship to the inscriptions on many of the British Museum’s Bock portraits, it is clear that the British Museum’s collection of Bock portraits derive from a larger assemblage of prints, paintings and ethnographic objects collected by Robinson before his return to England in 1852, and which Barnard Davis purchased from GA Robinson’s widow in 1867. Davis’ descriptions of this material clearly identify the works as having been executed by Thomas Bock.
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This drawing is unsigned and untitled. The assumption of Larretong as the subject is based on naming in other versions of this image such as that held by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (see Bonyhady & Lehman 2018:172), dated 1837.
Plomley (1965:4) titles this woman as 'Larretong', in Plate 5. He notes: 'The Oxford portrait has the Type B inscription' "The Widow of A Chief and Native of Cape Grim" and the notes are "dead about 3 years - mother of Adolphus, named Larretong. She never had any commn. with Europeans till went to Flinders".'
Plomley (1995:34) notes of this portrait: 'Larretong, Wife of Wymuric, West Coast chief; captured by G.A. Robinson 15 July 1832, and her husband about the same time. To Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement about 3 November 1832. On 25 November Wymuric and some others (presumably including Larretong) visited Hobart with the Commandant, W.J. Darling, returning to Flinders Island on 3 January, 1833. It would have been during this month in Hobart that Bock would have painted Larretong's portrait'.
Production date of about October 1831 is based on Plomley (1991:3).
Historian Cassandra Pybus, in advice by email June 2018, believes this is not 'Larretong' as asserted by Plomley, but Nollerhalleker (Kit), widow of Penderoin ('chief of Cape Grim').
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2017-2018 06 Dec– 11 Mar, Birmingham, Ikon Gallery, Thomas Bock
2018 17 Aug- 09 Nov, Hobart, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Thomas Bock
- Condition
- Window mounted, in good condition.
- Acquisition notes
- This was probably part of the collection of artworks and ethnographic objects which Joseph Barnard Davis (q.v.) acquired from Robinson's widow in the 1860s, and which AW Franks (q.v.) later purchased for the British Museum at the auction sale of Davis's estate in 1883.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc2006,Drg.68
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: 16 (Davis Catalogue MS 145 RAI 1867)
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Miscellaneous number: Oc2006-Drg68-Boc
