Philip Slaeger

Abstract

Slaeger was both an artist and engraver who probably 65 practised in this capacity at home in England before being convicted at Maidstone, Kent for anunspecified charge in March 1804. Sentenced to seven years transportation, he arrived in Sydney in July 1807 and spent most of the next three years as an assigned servant in the Parramatta andHawkesbury districts. His knowledge of these places was later utilized for the studies of the Hawkesbury and of Windsor which he both drew and engraved for West’s 1814 edition of Views of New South Wales. His View of Part of the Town of Windsor in New South Wales has been drawn with painstaking care and a close attention to detail so that the vegetation, ships and neat little houses in the background are all finely rendered by countless tiny closely-hatched strokes. His naive disregard for perspective means that the eye weaves its way rather jerkily back into the distance via a tenuousserpentine line extending across the Hawkesbury and up the bank on the other side of the river.