Title: Port Darwin, Northern Territory
Artist: James Howe Carse [aka. J. Carr] (c. 1819-1900)
Engraver: James Charles Armytage (1802? or c.1820-1897)
Date: [ca. 1873]
Notes: The engraving, by James Charles Armytage, was made from a drawing by James Howe Carse [signed J. Carr], of Port Darwin in the Northern Territory, for Edwin Carton Booth's "Australia" published in 1873.
James Howe Carse [aka. J. Carr]
James Howe Carse was born in about 1819 in Edinburgh, and his father is said to have been Alexander Carse, a well-known painter of Scottish scenes. He was enrolled at the new Royal Scottish Academy, where his father, having returned to Scotland from London, was a founding member.
Carse was in London in the early 1860s, exhibiting paintings of Scotland and England, and by 1869 he had visited both Australia and New Zealand.
An engraving of his painting of Aboriginals sitting around a fire on the shore of King George Sound was commissioned by Edwin Carton Booth. This and several of his other drawings of New Zealand and Western Australia were included in Booth's Australia Illustrated, although they were attributed to "Carr".
In 1876 he was described in New South Wales as the "perhaps the best painter in the colony" and his work was selling at 30 guineas a painting.
He and his friend George Podmore's home was at Mosman Bay. Carse died in 1900 from the effects of alcoholism.
Provenance: "Australia" vol. I, 1873; Edwin Carton Booth F.R.C.I. with drawings by (John) Skinner Prout, N. (Nicholas) Chevalier, &c. &c.
Author: Edwin Carton Booth
Contributor: John Skinner Prout (1805-1876)
Contributor: Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902)
Date of Publication: 1873
Volume: I
Publisher: Virtue & Co
Place of Publishing: London
Copyright status: This work is out of copyright
Courtesy: The British Library
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