Not a First Fleet Portrait

Whilst I was assembling a collection of the known images of the earliest European residents of NSW, Michael Flynn, the First & Second Fleet historian, pointed out a problem.

In The Fatal Shore (1986), Robert Hughes published portraits of a man he claimed was First Fleet marine lieutenant Ralph Clark, and a woman said to be his wife, Betsy Alicia (who did not accompany him to NSW). Clark is famous (or infamous) for having compared his wife, an ‘angel and not a woman’, with the female convicts, whom he described as ‘damned bitches’.

Hughes sourced these images to the State Library of NSW, but when I searched their catalogue, only the one of Betsy was listed, and this was now described as ‘formerly believed’ to be her. The supposed portrait of Ralph Clark did not appear in the catalogue at all.

On inquiring of the State Library, they explained that they did hold the portrait identified by Hughes as Lieutenant Clark, but it was thought to be John Blaxland (brother of the settler and explorer Gregory Blaxland), who arrived in the colony in 1807. This miniature was given to the library in 1926 by a member of the Blaxland family, and at no point in its history was it ever associated with Ralph Clark.

The supposed miniature of Betsy was acquired by the library in 1914 along with her husband’s journal and letters and was apparently identified by the donor as the portrait which Lieutenant Clark carried with him on the First Fleet. In fact, it was painted a decade after her death, as a check of the miniature itself would have established.

Hughes might be excused for that mistake, but it is difficult to understand how he confused Clark and Blaxland. He was working fast whilst researching The Fatal Shore and his record-keeping was sometimes chaotic – but given that no one had ever associated this portrait with Ralph Clark, the blunder is surely more serious than a misplaced annotation.

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The image at the head of this catspaw is listed in the State Library's catalogue as [John Blaxland, ca. 1785-1800 - miniature portrait], the brackets meaning that they are not certain that the sitter was John Blaxland. The call number is MIN 88.

The portrait claimed by Robert Hughes to be Lieut. Ralph Clark.