Lot 3588

Description

HMAS Sydney Destroying the German Cruiser SMS Emden, Nov 9, 1914, watercolour by artist John Downes Castle depicting the first great action of the Royal Australian Navy when HMAS Sydney engaged and destroyed the German cruiser SMS Emden in the Indian Ocean around the Australian external territory of Cocos Keeling Islands approximately midway between Western Australia and Sri Lanka; the watercolour (48x30cm), signed at bottom right corner by J D Castle, is matt framed under perspex with a gold timber frame (78x60.5cm). The painting has slipped slightly away from the matting at the top, otherwise extremely fine.

John Downes Castle was born at Sydney in 1858, the first child of Isabella Downes and Captain Louis Thomas Castle, a master mariner from Sunderland, England. The family had a rich maritime tradition and Captain Castle and his wife had arrived in Sydney in September 1857 and settled at Waverley. For many years the captain sailed the clipper brig 'Waverley' which according to newspaper reports at the time was the aristocrat of the innumerable small craft that traded from port to port around the Australian coastline from the sixties to the eighties of the 19th century.

Unlike his father, John Downes Castle did not pursue a career on the sea but did become involved in an ancillary craft vital to the safety of ships and their crew. He became a chronometer and watch maker with an office in Hunter Street, Sydney. Nonetheless he obviously had a great knowledge of ships as demonstrated by his paintings. Most of his paintings are of ships owned or connected to his family and those berthed in the ports he visited. He did however have an interest in subjects of a commemorative nature and hence his painting of the historic HMAS Sydney-SMS Emden battle.

With basic research.