Flagship Painting Has Experts In A Flap: Is It Sirius?

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday August 13, 1987

As a watercolour claimed to be the only contemporary painting of HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet, goes up for auction today, doubts are being raised as to whether the subject really is the Sirius.

The painting was scheduled to be auctioned at the annual Cowes Week sale of marine paintings at Bonhams in Knightsbridge and the talk yesterday was that the work, signed by the artist John Thomas Serres and dated 1789, could fetch up to Pound20,000 ($A45,200).

This says a great deal about the art market's ability to turn anything - in this case the Australian Bicentenary - to advantage, because there are very real doubts that the painting is of the Sirius, doubts which have caused the Australian National Maritime Museum to decide against bidding for the painting.

"There is nothing to indicate the ship is the Sirius, except a traditional attribution - there is a lot to indicate it is not," the museum's deputy director, Mr Gavin Fry, told the Herald yesterday.

Behind that short statement lies weeks of detective work, no definite conclusions and a coolness in relations between Bonhams and the museum.

Bonhams still say the painting is of the Sirius. "We're still sticking to the fact that it is the Sirius based on the original plans of the ship and two amateur drawings by someone on the ship which are now in the Natural History Museum," a spokeswoman said.

The painting was seen as authentic enough to be included in a book of British naval vessels published in 1948. It was also accepted by its then owner, a marine art collector, Mr Bruce Ingram, as the Sirius, at a time when there was little interest in Australiana.

"We base our opinion on some purely circumstantial factors, some logical reasons and some technical reasons," Mr Fry said.

He noted that the Sirius had started life as the Berwick, an East India merchantman, but caught fire in the Thames. The Royal Navy bought the hulk and rebuilt it, fitting it out, according to Britain's National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, with "the refuse of the yards".

The Serres painting, Mr Fry said, was of a ship considerably larger than the Sirius. It also showed a good deal of decorative work on the stern. British Admiralty drawings of the Sirius showed none. Those same drawings showed three windows in the quarter gallery of the stern but there were none in the painting.

The rigging on the ship in the painting is an old-fashioned type not used by Royal Navy yards when Berwick became the Sirius. Might that be explained by the Sirius having been jerry-built "with the refuse of the yards"?

Mr Fry thinks not. He feels Royal Navy policy to standardise fittings on its vessels would have been followed in the rebuilding of the Berwick. The Admiralty drawings and those made of the Sirius in Port Jackson certainly showed her to be wearing the more modern rig.

Mr Fry says the likely explanation was that Serres had used old drawings and his memory. As a result, he had ended up with a painting of a frigate of the Royal Navy, its hull very similar to that of HMS Sirius but its rigging that of the merchantman Berwick.

That conclusion was not a happy one for the museum. "If we believed it was the real thing, it would be a very important painting and we'd want to buy it for sure," Mr Fry said.