Port Melbourne. Sandridge, Victoria antique engraving after Nicholas Chevalier, c1874.

by Booth, Edwin Carton

Sandridge, Victoria engraving c1874 with beautiful pastoral scene c1874. Sandridge was the industrial port of the Port Phillip Colony, Melbourne. This antique print is very finely engraved - a beautiful scene of serenity with cows grazing along the foreshore, a fisherman and nets outside his cottage on the left, Sandridge with its tall chimneys viewed across the water, and the port and masted sailing ships in the background.

Fine original steel engraving by John Godfrey (1817-1889) after a drawing by Nicholas Chevalier, for Edwin Carton Booth's Australia, Illustrated published in England circa 1874 by Virtue & Co. 

Having left Russia with his father who returned to Switzerland in 1845. Nicholas Chevalier studied painting and architecture in Lausanne, Switzerland and Munich, Germany. He became an illustrator in watercolours and lithography after moving to London in 1851. Two of his paintings were hung in the Royal Academy in 1852.  He then studied painting in Rome before before returning to London. In 1855 Nicholas arrived in Australia and joined his father and his brother who was manager of the vineyards at Bontharambo on the Ovens River in Victoria. Nicholas became a cartoonist on the newly established Melbourne Punch periodical and became an illustrator for the Illustrated Australian News. In 1864 his painting The Buffalo Ranges was purchased by the government for the National Gallery of Victoria. It was the first picture painted in Australia to be included in the Melbourne collection.

This antique print is soiled at the base of the page. Otherwise it is in good condition with wide borders, as published. It has later fine hand-tinting by watercolour. Image: 113 x 178mm (4.5 x 7 inches). Page: 15cm x 20cm (6 x 8 inches).