IS THIS A PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR AN ICON?

arely, a single example of fineart achieves iconic status,becoming synonymous with a

particular genre of painting. Adistinctive example is The CutmearTwins, drawn c. 1842 by the stillconfined convict artist Thomas.Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847).'

Wainewright's portrayal of Jane andLucy Cutmear is wonderful. Thissingle watercolour epitomises what anyart connoisseur, or anyone with even apassing interest, may regard as thedefmitive 'colonial' Australian drawing',sketched during an era whenportraiture retained its allure. Themodest size of the watercolourdemonstrates that a work of art doesnot need to be grandiose to be grand.

Drawn when the Cutrnear sisters wereabout 8 or 9 (Lucy was born in 1833 andJane in 1834,see n. I), the artistreputedly sketched their likeness ingratitude for kindness shown by theirfather towards Wainewright, while heremained incarcerated for forgery. Theirfather James Cutmear, while prisonbarracks gatekeeper, is reputed to havesupplied rudimentary drawing materialsto Wainewright while serving his lifesentence. This simple but kind gesturewas returned in, kind by Wainewright.

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847), The Cutmear Twins, Jane and Lucyc. 1842, pencil and watercolour on paper,32.4 x 30.0 cm. Collection of the NationalGallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australiawatercolour illustrates the sistersessentially side by side, their headsconfidently facing front on, eachgazing directly at us with a poise thatbetrays their youth. The drawingretains some of the subtle blue-purpletincture that is but one telltale signcorroborating attribution toWainewright's hand.

Now let us carefully consider theillustrated pencil drawing. Someintrinsic features tend to support the

hypothesis that this diminutivepreliminary drawing was not onlydrawn by Wainewright but depictseither Jane or Lucy Cutmear,' Weknow with certainty Wainewrightproduced preparatory drawings for hisfmished work;" it is therefore notsurprising that a pencil and washpreliminary drawing (on card) hassurfaced 160 years after the convictartist produced his colonial piece deresistance watercolour of the adorablegirls in about 1842.

AUSTRALlANA MAY 2007 27

The NGA watercolour and thispreliminary drawing show facialsimilarities, even to the lay observer. Theupright head is more easily andaccurately measured on the Cutmearchild drawn on the right in the NGAwatercolour. If one measures the distancebetween the top of her head and thebottom of her nose, then the distancebetween the front part in her hair to herchin, the distance from the centre of hereyes and the base of her nose, thedistance between the base of her noseand the bottom of her chin, and thedistance between the bottom of her earand her chin, when compared with thepreliminary drawing, all are precisely inproportion to the drawing.

Each twin is blessed with brown eyesin the NGA watercolour. The samecolour can be observed in thepreliminary drawing (only just, given theage-tonedcard and evidence of handling).Wainewright has embellished andemphasised (probably fictitiously) eachsister with luscious red cupid-bow shapedlips; and there is a hint of red ever soslightly replicated on the drawing.

The relativelyhigh foreheads in thewatercolour appear in the preliminarydrawing and Wainewright has deftlypainted Jane and Lucy with brown hairneatly gathered in delightful side andback plaits held securely by ribbons. Thehair of the girl in the pencil drawing,while not similarly plaited, is sufficientlylong (both at the sides and back) to beable to be tied identically as in thewatercolour. Expressed another way,should either Jane or Lucy in the NGAwatercolour untie their hair, in allprobability their locks would look likethe untied side and back-of-the-headringlets of the girl in the petite sketch.The pencil strokes applied to draw thesketched sitter's ringlets, when viewed onan angle, are finely rendered.

The pencil illustration was acquired bythe author from the Masterpiece Fine ArtGallery, Hobart (now Masterpiece @

!XL), who acquired it from a Sydneyprivate collector, that collector firm in hisbelief that this portrait depicts either Jane

~or Lucy Cutmear. The Sydney collector

28 AUSTRALIANA MAY 2007

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847), preliminary sketch possibly ofJane or Lucy Cutmear, c. 1842, unsigned,pencil and wash on card, 10.7 x 9.6 cm.Private collection, Victoria

Engraving of'Wainewright of2 MissesDumas Tasmania'. Private collection,New South Wales

recollects obtaining the portrait (sincerefuuned) in the metal frame illustrated,from a lady who owned a property inVictoria, who in turn acquired if fromthe grand-daughter of a person named ina will. Intriguingly and importantly forthis critique, that document accompaniedthe drawing, opening up the prospect forresearch.

The last will and testament of BeverleyBeaumont is dated 2 August 1974.MsBeaumont died 9 April 1975.Givenrelatively high precedence, the first legacylists Ms Beaumont's two grand-daughters

and states that the eldest may select'whichever one of my two WainewrightPortraits as she shall choose when sheattains the age of twenty-one years ... andthe other of the said Portraits to my(other) grand-daughter upon her attainingthe age of twenty-one years.'

The will goes on ... 'I direct that mysaid Trustee shall during the infancy ofmy said granddaughters' loan the saidPortraits as follows:-One to the HobartGallery Tasmania and the other to theLaunceston Gallery Tasmania on suchterms and conditions as my said Trusteeshall in its absolute discretion determine.'

A few clues emerge from these extracts.Firstly,a second Wainewright portrait isrevealed - could this literally be 'the twin',maybe the other Cutmear sister, to mypencil sketch? Secondly, the TasmanianMuseum & Art Gallery (!MAG) and theQueen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery(QVMAG) might be able to shed light onthese drawings.

Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery Hobartmade enquiries of the TMAG duringJune 2005, which gained a reply. TheQVMAG did not respond.

The TMAG letter says 'the Trusteeconsidered the proposed loan of theWainewright portrait on 2 October 1975.The decision was made not to accept theloan. The Director at TMAG at the time,Mr D R Gregg, informed the (Trustees)of this decision in a letter dated the 3rdOctober 1975."Subsequent contact withDon Gregg, now retired, revealed theTMAG was reluctant to accept loans then(there were so many offers being made tothem), the portrait was so small and forsecurity purposes, it probably needed tobe ensconced in a glass cabinet that wasnot ideal. TMAG did not doubt theportrait's authenticity.

Now to the second portrait. Might itbe possible to track ber down some 30years after Beverley Beaumont'spassing? Once again the will providedvital clues; a north-east Victorianlocation was named where the grand-daughters resided during 1974. Thisgeneral locality could be verified 0

the slim chance they, or their rstill resided there. Of co

grand-daughters almost certainly wouldhave changed their surnames uponmarriage, further complicating theslender chance of finding either of them.

The author undertook a routineexercise of writing letters to severalpersons that arose from a White Pagesinternet search, using the grand-daughters' surname from 1974.Remarkably within only two days, but30 years after their grandmother hadpassed on, one of the letters hit themark. A relative referred my enquiryto one of the grand-daughters namedin the will.

The excited reaction during our firsttelephone conversation r~ealed thegrand-daughter not only expectedsomeone to contact her one day inrelation to the two Wainewrightportraits, but she still owned the otherone (although this other sketch doesnot look like either Jane or LucyCutmear). The news got better giventhe grand-daughter's portrait washoused exactly the same as theauthor's, in a rather quaintcontemporary gilt metallic frame, eachpossessing decorative scrollwork and afairly crudely cut (off centre) goldembossed window for displaying eachdrawing. The grand-daughter's youngersister had chosen to dispose of herWainewright portrait more than adecade ago; of course this is the onenow in the author's collection.

A subsequent meeting in Melbournewith the grand-daughter confirmedour sketches are the two Wainewrightportraits referred to in BeverleyBeaumont's will. Intriguingly thegrand-daughter was kind enough tobring an additional 'sketch' titled onthe reverse 'Wainewright of 2 MissesDumas Tasmania', with an excitingpostscript that the grand-daughter'sgreat great great grandmother was aDumas. As it turned out, this was anengraving rather than an originalsketch; however more facts weresurfacing that might provide furtherlinks to Wainewright during 1842,when he captured the likeness of theCutmear sisters.

Given the distance, a professionalresearcher was now needed to pursuethis Dumas information via TasmanianState Archives in Hobart. That delvingproved fruitful as the Dumas family wasnot only living in Hobart during the1840s, they were from the right socialmilieu to commission a portrait of theirdaughters, all of whom would have beenborn before they settled in Tasmania.'

Captain (or Major) John CraigDumas, a native of County KerryIreland, arrived at Hobart Town incharge of the guard aboard the convicttransport Yom, on 29 August 1829,accompanied by his wife, fivedaughters and two sons.' He hadreceived his commission in the 84thregiment in 1798, transferred to the75th and served in India until 1807,being several times wounded. In 1812he sailed with his regiment to Sicilywhere he became Assistant Adjutant-General to Sir Hew Dalrymple. Dumasbecame Governor of Ithaca and laterof Paxos, Greece. He was subsequentlystationed in Gibraltar and in 1828 wasforced, it seems, to retire on half paydue to failing health. In 1829 hejoined the 63rd regiment, then underorders for the Australian colonies,from which he sold out in 1830.1

We can pinpoint with reasonablecertainty the following provenance ofthe two pencil sketches and theengraving of the 'Wainewright of 2Misses Dumas Tasmania':

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847), preliminary sketch, unsigned,pencil and wash on card, 10.7 x 9.6 em.Private collection, New South Wales;being the other drawing referred to inBeverley Beaumont's will, the 'twin' tothe author's

By 1842, the year acknowledged forThe Cutmear Twins portrait, John Dumasis listed as living at 'Lyn Grove', CoalRiver, to the north east and not far from

AUSTRALIANA MAY 2007 29

Contemporary metal frame, used to house both preliminary sketches

Hobart' He would have had ampleopportunity to come into contact withThomas Griffiths Wainewright, as didother local identities who soughtWainewright out in Hobart - either outof curiosity or to make use of, or maybeexploit, his artistic talents.

Dumas' widow Dorothea died (aged61) at Westbury in 1853, and was likelyto be living with her aforementioneddaughter, Mrs Anne Martin, in theWestbury area.10 Previous ownership of theNGA's wat:ercolourThe CutmuJ.r Twins liststhe MissesFitzpatrick of Westbury Inn(seenote 1). Anecdotal evidence supportsthe contention that the pencil sketch wasin the Westbury area of Tasmania duringits ownership, as was the NGA wat:ercolourof The Cuimear Twins.

30 AUSTRALIANA MAY 2007

Perhaps the Dumas family was theconduit through which the Cutmeardrawings were originally passed from thegirls' father, James Cutmear. Incidentally,Jane and Lucy Cutmear bad youngersisters,and the identically framed pencilsketch (while unlike Jane or Lucy) may beeither Eliza Sophia Cutmear (born 1835)or Sophia Elizabeth Cutmear (born 1836).

Research to attribute this relativelysmall drawing not only to T.G.Wainewright, but as his preparatorydrawing of either Jane or LucyCutmear, continues. Of course wecannot discount that both sketchesmay be two of the five daughters whoaccompanied Captain John CraigDumas on his 1829 journey to VanDiemen's Land aboard the York.

Alas Jane Cutmear died 14 March 1846of inflammation of the lungs, aged only12 years 7 months, and Lucy Cutmeardied of consumption 20 December 1854,aged 21. Both lives cut far too short!

1 Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, Tbe CiamearTzains, c. 1842. pencil and watercolour onpaper. 324 x 30.0 em. National Gallery ofAustralia (NGA). Originally acquired by theCommonwealth Art Advisory Board fur thenational collection in 1%9 from Clune GallerySydney. from The Misses Fitzpatrick, WestburyInn, Tasmania 1954-1969.from Mrs Jean Saegar ?-1954. However, according to Tasmanian StateArchives, the girls weren't twins at all, being born

during 1833 (Lucy) and 1834 Oane) -http//port:aI.arcItMstas.gov.au/menu.aspx.1searcb=8,then searching by inputting the SUID2meCuttnear

2 This assertion is supported by Tbe CutmearTwins watercolour being reproduced in

Australian Art in tb« National Gl1lkry ofAustralia, Tim Bonyhady The Colonial Image:Australian Painting 18()()'1880. EUsyd Press.Chippendale 1987, front cover and page 25,Joan Kerr (editor) Tbt Diaionary of AustralianArtists - Painters, Sketchers, Pbotogmpben andEngravus to 1870. Oxford UP, Melbourne1992. page 827 (Wainewright sectioncontributed by Tony Anderson), EveBuscombe Artists in EarlY Auuralia And theirPortraits, Eureka Research. Sydney 1978. page331.1-332, Robert Crossland Waine'//Jnght inTasmania, Oxford UP, Melbourne 1954,frontispiece & page 152 (reissued edition1960). to name but a few. and the recent Moist,

Auumlian WaUrr:tJIOHTSExhibition held 27August-7 December 2005 NGA

3 Attributed Thomas Griffiths Wainewright(1794-1847). preliminary sketch possibty of Janeor Lug Cutmear, c. 1842, unsigned. pencil andwash on card, 10.7 x 9.6 em. Privatecollection, Victoria

4 Andrew Morris, 'Thomas Griffiths Wainewrigbtdilettante, or simply misunderstood?', AMstntIianaFebruary 2005, pp. 12-27,where both thepreparatory and finished drawings of HenriettaMaria Garrett are illustrated

5 Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery letter (fromSue Backhou.se, Curator of Art) addressed to theMasterpiece FIne Art Gallery Hobart dated 14

June 20056 Per findings of the author's commissioning of a

professional researcher, Margaret Glover, Hobart7 Tbe Hobart Tuum Geurin 5 September 18298 Tbt Hobart Town Cosner 22 December 1852 p.

3 Obituary and the Dumas correspondencefile, Tasmanian State Archives

9 Dumas correspondence file, TasmanianState Archiv.:s

10 Per Margaret Glover's research