Engraving
Maker & role
James Scott, Engraver; E. Prentis, Artist
Production date
1841
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Object detail
Title
Family Devotions - Evening
Production place
Collection
Measurements
Frame, H: 53 x W: 63cm (H: 530 x W: 630mm); Image, H: 45.5 x W: 56.5cm (H: 455 x W: 565mm)
Credit line
Gift, through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, by The Downes Family, 2010
Elizabeth Bay House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Elizabeth Bay House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caption
Family Devotions - Evening (1841)
Description
Engraving by James Scott after Edward Prentis, London, 1841, depicting a scene of evening prayers set within a bay window within a large 17th century house. The patriarch of a family reads to his family beneath a scene depicting the ‘Good Samaritan’. A box piano set with sheet music is to the side. One of a pair depicting domestic devotional scenes, the other entitled ‘Morning Devotions’ is set within the breakfast room of a suburban villa. Both works are in their in original bird’s eye maple veneer frames with glass.
Acquisitions for Elizabeth Bay House emphasise the early period of occupation by the Macleay family, from1839 to 1845, and where possible are based on documentary or physical evidence. The engravings ‘Family Devotions, Morning & Evening’ are provenanced to the Macleay family’s country property, Brownlow Hill, Cobbitty, and appear in an inventory of its contents drawn up in February 1859 for its owner George Macleay. The verso of one work is inscribed by George Macleay as a gift to Mrs Jeremiah Downes, the wife of his manager and the property’s later owner. Whereas the majority of the pictures at Brownlow are likely to have been from the collection of Alexander Macleay, relocated from Elizabeth Bay House in 1845, the date of these engravings (1841) suggests the possibility of Macleay’s younger son George (1809-1891) having been their original owner.
In the Family Devotions series changes in British social life and domestic arrangements are given a spiritual reading. Each engraving shows the service of morning or evening prayer being read from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (first published in 1549) by the master of the house. In this scene - ‘Family Devotions – evening’ - the backdrop of a 17th century bay window of leaded glass, suggests that the setting is the great hall of a manor house that was historically at the centre of British rural society and a place of communal dining. A large framed painting of the Good Samaritan appears within the engraved view conveying messages of Christian charity and noblesse oblige.
The genre scenes may be considered along with other records and remnants of the Macleay family’s art collection for what they reveal of the history of Taste. Genre painting, a revival of a Dutch 17th-18th tradition that typically used a wealth of detail to comment on the human condition, was a significant theme in the Scottish school of painting at the beginning of the nineteenth century as typified by the work of painters such as David Allen and Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841). Macleay was a member of the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland formed in 1833, which promoted artists’ work (including work in the genre tradition) through exhibitions and disseminating engravings. The subjects of the works are themselves significant for the insights they give into the Macleay family’s Tory conservative social and political views.
With their wealth of finely observed incidental details (the detailed villa scene in the companion piece has guided the interpretation of the Elizabeth Bay House breakfast room) the engravings are a valuable resource in thematic tours of the property. They are particularly valuable as a visual aid in the explanation of property interpretation. The represented scenes are effective for explaining the changing role of male figures within the household and society, and to the changing role of the family within 19th century British and Colonial psychology and world views.
Acquisitions for Elizabeth Bay House emphasise the early period of occupation by the Macleay family, from1839 to 1845, and where possible are based on documentary or physical evidence. The engravings ‘Family Devotions, Morning & Evening’ are provenanced to the Macleay family’s country property, Brownlow Hill, Cobbitty, and appear in an inventory of its contents drawn up in February 1859 for its owner George Macleay. The verso of one work is inscribed by George Macleay as a gift to Mrs Jeremiah Downes, the wife of his manager and the property’s later owner. Whereas the majority of the pictures at Brownlow are likely to have been from the collection of Alexander Macleay, relocated from Elizabeth Bay House in 1845, the date of these engravings (1841) suggests the possibility of Macleay’s younger son George (1809-1891) having been their original owner.
In the Family Devotions series changes in British social life and domestic arrangements are given a spiritual reading. Each engraving shows the service of morning or evening prayer being read from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (first published in 1549) by the master of the house. In this scene - ‘Family Devotions – evening’ - the backdrop of a 17th century bay window of leaded glass, suggests that the setting is the great hall of a manor house that was historically at the centre of British rural society and a place of communal dining. A large framed painting of the Good Samaritan appears within the engraved view conveying messages of Christian charity and noblesse oblige.
The genre scenes may be considered along with other records and remnants of the Macleay family’s art collection for what they reveal of the history of Taste. Genre painting, a revival of a Dutch 17th-18th tradition that typically used a wealth of detail to comment on the human condition, was a significant theme in the Scottish school of painting at the beginning of the nineteenth century as typified by the work of painters such as David Allen and Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841). Macleay was a member of the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland formed in 1833, which promoted artists’ work (including work in the genre tradition) through exhibitions and disseminating engravings. The subjects of the works are themselves significant for the insights they give into the Macleay family’s Tory conservative social and political views.
With their wealth of finely observed incidental details (the detailed villa scene in the companion piece has guided the interpretation of the Elizabeth Bay House breakfast room) the engravings are a valuable resource in thematic tours of the property. They are particularly valuable as a visual aid in the explanation of property interpretation. The represented scenes are effective for explaining the changing role of male figures within the household and society, and to the changing role of the family within 19th century British and Colonial psychology and world views.
Accession number
EB2010/3
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