Heritage 0306_Ludwig Becker.pdf - Australian Heritage Magazine

specimens, paintings, artefacts and
other objects.
In Mainz, Becker met and
befriended the Englishman
William Gardner who was
touring the continent with
his family. Gardner invited
Becker to visit him in
Edinburgh and later
offered him a free
passage to Van Diemen’s
Land. Gladly accepting
Gardner’s offer, Becker
sailed on the 13
November 1850 with
the Gardner family on
the Hannah from
Liverpool via
Pernambuco to
Launceston.
Approaching their final
destination, the travellers
were greeted by one of the
great blights of the Australian
continent, bushfire. Becker wrote
in a letter to his friend Johann Jakob
Kaup: “The crew noticed an opaque
yellow sky which after sunset became
so black that one could not see one
foot ahead on our ship. The next
morning sails, ropes and the ship’s
weather side wall were covered with
smut and coal-dust.” These were the
devastating bushfires of 6 and 7
February 1851 in which hundreds of
lives were lost, and which became
known as the fires of Black Thursday.
In spite of this, Becker’s first
impression of Van Diemen’s Land
was very favourable: “Van Diemen’s
Land is a divine country; we are now
in middle April, which corresponds
to October in Germany and it is
always warm and lovely. Only the
mosquitoes plague me terribly at
night,” he wrote to his friend.
Becker made his home in
Launceston, initially with the
Gardner family. His good nature had
endeared him to the Gardner
children who were soon busy
collecting natural specimens for him
around their new home. Everywhere
he went, Becker collected avidly and
was also occasionally presented with
specimens as gifts. Wanting to share
his enthusiasm for all things
Australian with his family, he
thought that boots made from
kangaroo leather would make a nice
present. He wrote to Kaup: “I am
sending a pair home, which should
fit my brother Ferdinand. Perhaps it
may yet be discovered that with such
62 Australian Heritage
footwear one can jump as high as
and far as the animal from which the
skin is taken.”
In June 1851, Becker travelled
through the settled districts of
northern Tasmania. He passed
through green undulating plains and
hills and put up at homesteads and
country houses. Short of money, he
was able to support himself by
painting miniatures of local
pastoralists. Many of the earliest and
best impressions of the colony were
painted by Becker, including historic
buildings which have long since
vanished, creating a visual language
for the landscape of Van Diemen’s
Land.
When Lieutenant-Governor Sir
William Denison arrived in
Launceston on 30 July 1851, William
Gardner introduced Ludwig Becker
to him. Denison took an immediate
liking to Becker and invited him to
stay at Government House in Hobart
Town. He was given the room
previously occupied by Sir John
Franklin and, thus happily installed,
enjoyed the Governor’s hospitality
for seven months.
Denison invited Becker to
accompany him on visits throughout
the colony, providing him with every
opportunity to collect, observe and
Ludwig Becker, lithograph by Frederick
Schoenfield (1810-1860). Courtesy of
the National Library of Australia
PIC S7823, nla.pic-an9455402.
paint. As a guest in
Government House and
thus very well
connected, it is not
surprising that Becker
was soon accepted into
the scientific
community of the
colony. Denison
appeared to have been
genuinely fond of his
German guest. In a letter
dated 10 November 1851
he wrote: “... we have got a
German artist in the house.
Becker, for that is his name, is
a most amusing companion. He
and I consort very well together,
for he is a dabbler in all those
sciences with which I am, to a
certain extent, conversant, so that
we meet upon common ground.”
Enchanted by the beauty of his
surroundings, Becker painted some
delightful watercolour landscapes of
colonial Van Diemen’s Land. He also
painted Aborigines he met at Oyster
Cove, recorded some Aboriginal
words and purchased some trinkets to
add to his collection of ‘curiosities’.
Becker’s sketches and watercolours
have great charm and are of rare
anthropological and historical value.
Travelling to Port Arthur by sea
with Sir William in December 1851
gave Becker the opportunity to paint
some of the finest scenes of colonial
Van Diemen’s Land. The natural
beauty of the Tasman Peninsula
deeply impressed the artist. His
painting of the Blow Hole is a
detailed and accurate account of this
geological feature. Becker even
included himself in the picture,
which depicts the artist at work,
sitting on a rock in front of the Blow
Hole. The Blow-hole, Tasman’s
Peninsular (sic) has been described by
Andrew Sayers as representing “the
perfect balance between art and
science which prevailed for a short
moment in the mid-nineteenth
century”.
Like so many others, Becker was
gripped by gold-fever and decided to
try his luck at the goldfields of
Bendigo in Victoria. By April 1852