Point Piper from Shark Island, New South Wales

George Edwards Peacock was admitted as a solicitor in London in February 1830. His legal career did not fare well and driven by desperation, he forged a power of attorney for transfer of stock valued at £7,814, the property of his brother. Peacock was sentenced to death for forgery at London’s Old Bailey but his sentence was commuted to transportation for life and Peacock found himself in the prison hulk JUSTITIA, moored in the Thames. Transported aboard PRINCE GEORGE, he reached Sydney on 8 May 1837.

Marked as a ‘gentleman’ convict he was first dispatched to Port Macquarie where he acted as a clerk to the prison barracks. Three months after his arrival, Peacock’s wife and son joined him at Port Macquarie and in 1839 he was sent to Sydney where after training under the government astronomer James Dunlop, he became a meteorological observer at the government weather station at South Head, living alone in a cottage nearby as his then marriage had broken up.

In the 1840s he began painting professionally. His oils, generally small and atmospheric, concentrated on Sydney Harbour and the exclusive private villas along its foreshores. This view of Point Piper features the luxurious Henrietta Villa, property of Captain Piper. It was completed in 1822 and became the scene of much sumptuous entertainment.

Peacock’s work resembles that of his contemporary Conrad Martens who was giving lessons in Sydney at the time Peacock began to paint. Peacock, like Martens, had a keen interest in meteorology and, also like Martens, made many views of, or from, his patron’s residences. Many colonists employed both artists.