Blue Mountains History Journal Issue 2

Blue Mountains History Journal 2; 2011
THE MARTINDALE FAMILY AND THE SKETCHBOOK OF MARY
ELIZABETH MARTINDALE
John Low
39, Highland St, Leura, NSW 2780
grizzlybear3au@yahoo
Abstract
In 1860, during a journey along the Western Road across the Blue Mountains, Mary Martindale created
a series of watercolour sketches as a memento of her trip. In their modest way they depict road
conditions, people and vehicles, buildings and landscape scenery. Mary was the wife of Captain Ben
Hay Martindale who spent three difficult years in NSW responsible for roads, railways and the electric
telegraph. Soon after this excursion Ben resigned and the family returned to England where Mary died
in 1902. In 1930 her daughter donated the sketchbook to the Mitchell Library. Largely ignored, it
provides a valuable impression of travel in the years before the railway.
Keywords: Martindale; Western Road; travel; art; women; Blue Mountains
Introduction
In the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, there are 19 small watercolour sketches (the largest
measuring 22 x 30.5 cm), collected, in no apparent order, under the title Our Trip to the Blue Mountains
NSW 1860 (Martindale 1860b). In their modest way they record the impressions of a young English
gentlewoman, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Martindale, who travelled along the Western Road across the Blue
Mountains in the mid-nineteenth century. While other nineteenth century women, including Elizabeth
Hawkins (Mackaness 1965, pp.102-117), Louisa Meredith (Meredith 1973), Sophia Stanger (Mackaness
1965, pp.255-266) and Rachel Henning (Adams 1985) have all left letters and journals that vividly
record the difficulties and drama of early road travel in the Blue Mountains, the sketches of Mary
Martindale provide a visual account, a travel journal without words.
Figure 1. Ben Hay Martindale (Anonymous
Both sketching and painting were common
accomplishments among educated women of the
nineteenth century (Hammond 1993; Jordan 2005;
Kerr & Broadbent 1980; Sayers 1989). Indeed,
drawing was “unstoppably popular and widely
taught” as an appropriately moral and innocent
component of a middle to upper class woman’s
“ornamental education” (Jordan 2005, p.18). Such
work was generally limited and conventional in its
artistic ambitions, and was almost always pursued
as recreation and for consumption within the
domestic circle of family and friends. Uninhibited
by expectations of a public audience, however, it
often revealed a greater honesty in its depiction of
subject matter, a quality prized by social historians.
A sketchbook was an indispensible companion on
any special journey at that time, and the sketches of
Mary Martindale have all the above characteristics.
Nevertheless, though made reference to by art
historian Joan Kerr (1980; 1992), they have been
largely ignored, even by Blue Mountains historians.
1 Back to Contents