National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 56 | April 2002


The Murrays of Yarralumla and Winderradeen

[A Colonial Homestead]
[A Colonial Homestead]
watercolour; 19.4 x 27.0 cm with upper edges rounded
window mount 30.5 x 39.2 cm

The National Library has recently received four very fine watercolours relating to the Murray family of Yarralumla and Winderradeen. The watercolours were the gift of Mr Grant Aubrey Garrioch, whose great great-grandfather Terence Murray arrived in NSW in 1827 and took up large grants of land north of Lake Bathurst. His son, Terence Aubrey Murray, arrived in the Canberra district in 1837 to pursue pastoral interests on the Limestone plains and in the high country and beyond. In 1843 he was elected unopposed to the NSW Legislative Assembly, representing the Counties of Murray, King and Georgiana.  In that same year he married Mary (Minnie) Gibbes, the daughter of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, NSW Collector of Customs. The earliest of the watercolours presented by Mr Garrioch is a portrait of Minnie, painted by NSW society artist William Nicholas in 18431.

Minnie left the comfort and entertainments of her life in Sydney to live with Murray at Yarralumla. Her first child, a daughter named Leila Alexandrina, was born there in May 1844, delivered by her brother-in-law, Dr James Murray of Woden. A portrait of Minnie and her daughter was painted two years later, again by Nicholas. They make a charming pair, but Minnie’s subsequent childbearing history was less happy. Of her first five children, all girls, only two survived infancy. Her only son, James Aubrey Gibbes Murray, was born in November 1858, but Minnie died seven weeks later.

Terence Murray remarried in 1860, and his wife Agnes Edwards gave birth to a son in 1861. This child, named John Hubert Plunkett Murray after the NSW Attorney General J.H. Plunkett, is depicted with his stepbrother in the third of the watercolours. Aubrey and Hubert Murray (as the boys were known) were painted by R. Grindell, an itinerant artist who visited Winderradeen in 1863. The Murray family had moved to Winderradeen from Yarralumla in 1855.

The fourth of the watercolours shows a substantial, single storey colonial homestead, but is neither dated nor signed. Family tradition holds that this may be Winderradeen, near Collector, but it bears no resemblance to existing early photographs of that house. However, the house is shown thickly screened by shrubs and small trees. In 1841 Murray wrote to his friend and foreman Stewart Mowle asking him to get the gardener from Lake George to come to Yarralumla and plant the ground around the homestead as thickly as possible with shrubs. ‘Guard against having them too formally arranged’, he said, and this exactly describes the effect reproduced in the painting. It is therefore possible that the painting shows Yarralumla as it looked more than 150 years ago.

In making his generous gift, Mr Garrioch was keen for the watercolours to be added to the Library’s holdings relating to the Murray Family and preserved for future generations. The Murray Family papers are held at MS 565, and Gwendoline Wilson’s papers, relating to her publication Murray of Yarralumla, are held at MS 9512. Mrs Wilson’s papers also include two photographs of Winderradeen.

This formerly unattributed painting: Portrait of Mary Murray, née Gibbes 1843 was identified for the Library by Judith Newland who, in the process of cataloguing the painting discovered Nicholas’ signature and the date ‘hidden’ in the patterns of the carpet on which Minnie stands.
—Michelle Hetherington

List of works donated by Mr Garrioch
William Nicholas (1807–1854)
Portrait of Mary Murray,
née Gibbes 1843

watercolour; 39.4 x 27.8 cm
PIC 6556
R. Grindell (fl. 1863)
Portrait of Aubrey and Hubert Murray, at Winderradeen, 1863
watercolour; 15.1 x 11.8 cm
PIC 6555
William Nicholas (1807–1854)
Portrait of Mary Murray with her daughter, Leila, 1846
watercolour; diam. 17.4 cm
PIC 6554
A Colonial Homestead]
watercolour; 19.4 x 27.0 cm, with upper corners rounded
PIC 6557

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au