![]() ![]() Another commission was for Olof Hedberg a whale shipping fleet owner and merchant. ![]() For example, Richard Dry an MLC and speaker who later became premier and was the first native-born Tasmanian of immigrant parents to be knighted by Queen Victoria purchased a Murphy picture. The uniqueness of these works was fully appreciated by his contemporaries because Murphy’s works were prepared as commissions for port and signal authorities and prominent businessmen who would actually use his illustrations on a daily basis in their occupational and business life, and doubtless doubled as attractive and conversational works of art on their office walls.Īlthough the Maritime Museum’s work has no specifically named commissioner, many do. No other illustration, reference book or port manual depicts these unique merchant flags. The reason why this and another ten similar known works produced by Murphy are of such historical importance to the maritime history of Tasmania is that they are our only existing reference to the house flags. This diagrammatic illustration is titled ‘Signals Hobart Town’ by a convict guard of the 99 th (Lanarkshire) Regiment of Foot, Private Edward Murphy. Many of the flagged vessels depicted were owned and mastered by local merchants. It is an ‘elaborate ornamental illumination’ in water colours, pen and ink illustrating the individual house flags of merchant ships that regularly traded into Hobart Town during the 1840’s and 1850’s. Signal Flags of Hobart Town 1851 by Mark RisbyĪ little known picture held by the Maritime Museum of Tasmania is one of the most significant historical maritime art works of Tasmania.
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