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Collector's chest  c.1820
Courtesy of the Dixson Galleries,
State Library of New South Wales

 

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Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales
Sydney
Australia

Collector’s chest
c.1820

The Dixson Galleries Collector’s chest was probably constructed in New South Wales around 1818. Nothing is known about its history before it was purchased in London in 1937 by one of the State Library of New South Wales’ most important benefactors, Sir William Dixson, for 100 guineas. Although it is an unusual artefact for a library to own, as one of the most extraordinary works of colonial art and craftsmanship, and as a summary of a gentleman’s experience of colonial natural history, the chest is completely at home among the Library’s pictorial and manuscript collections documenting the early colonisation of Australia.

The chest opens to reveal 13 oil-painted panels, secreted in drawers or on the underside of its lid. The existence of a companion chest in a private Sydney collection with a strong provenance to Governor Macquarie, its probable date of construction (c.1820), and focus of the panels on the Newcastle district, plausibly hint that it was commissioned by the commandant of the convict settlement at Newcastle, Captain James Wallis of the 46th Regiment, who was in command of the Newcastle settlement between 1816 and 1819. One of his charges was professional artist and convict, Joseph Lycett, who is likely to have been the artist of the panels.

There is no doubt that the chest was designed for a natural history collection, although most of this has been lost. Natural history proved fascinating to all classes of colonists, and many were passionate collectors. It is likely that Wallis saw the chest as a repository for his own collections. It is also possible that he gave the other chest to Macquarie, as a political or strategic gift to his primary colonial patron. The Collector’s chest epitomises the way in which many people experienced natural history in the colony, emphasising as it does the diversity and difference of Australian natural history.