New Zealand, Mt Sefton and the Hooker River, Hooker Valley , c1886

Regular price $60.00 Sale

Original from Garran's The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia

Date: c1886

Artist: Schell Frederick B

Publisher: Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co

Paper Size: 175 x 160mm

Condition: good

Technique: Wood Engraving

Price: $60

Description: Wood Engraving with later hand colouring

Provenance:

The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia

Published in Sydney in 1886-88, the enormous, multi-volume 'Picturesque Atlas of Australia' was an attempt with words and pictures to describe the Australia of the time.

Its publication was one of the most significant cultural projects in 19th-century Australia. Writers, artists, academics, and politicians came together to prepare a book of unprecedented grandeur and ambition, and a publishing company was established to publish it. The 1100+ engravings on steel and wood contained in the Picturesque Atlas were among the finest engravings to be found anywhere in the world at this time, and many of the illustrations were specially commissioned works by leading Australian artists of the era, for the publication.

Biography:

Frederic B. Schell was born in Philadelphia in 1838 and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1862 Fred B. Schell became a Special Artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, a New York newspaper. In 1863, Frank Leslie assigned him to General Ulysses S. Grant’s army at Vicksburg. Grant was a U.S. general and commander of the Union armies during the late years of the American Civil War. Schell's work is well known in the States.

Fred was brought out to New Zealand to produce views for Garran's The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia. This three-volume set was made to mark 100 years of Australia’s settlement.