John Glover (1767-1849), Mills' Plains, Tasmania

John Glover (1767-1849)
Mills' Plains, Tasmania
inscribed 'Mills's Plains the whole mine my House below in the plain' on the reverse
pen, ink and wash on paper
unframed
27⁄8 x 41⁄8in. (7.2 x 10.3cm.)
... the expectation of finding a new Beautiful World - new landscapes, new trees new flowers new Animals Birds is delightful to me - I mean to take possession of 2,000 Acres of Land - to have a vineyard upon it ...
John Glover to Sir Thomas Phillipps, January 1830

A rediscovered vagrant from one of Glover's Tasmanian sketchbooks, the view is taken from the same spot as Glover's 'Mills Plains, Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis in the distance' (1836) in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart. The inscription on the reverse, proudly trumpeting his acquisition, suggests this little sketch may have been an announcement sent to a friend. It was the government grants of free land that prompted Glover to follow his sons to Van Diemen's Land, and he took up his grant ninety miles north of Hobart within a year of his arrival in the colony in February 1831, the Glover household following him out to Mills' Plains on 23 March 1832:

'The first few years at "Patterdale" were certainly busy ones, as John Richardson Glover's letters and John senior's sketchbooks testify. The Glovers constructed a two-storey house with an adjacent "Exhibition Room, 30 by 15 feet", as well as a separate dwelling for Henry and his family. A garden was established, paddocks fenced, crops sewn and reaped, the sheep washed and shorn. The indentured servant Eley absconded and there were visits from refractory convicts to deal with. From beyond the world of Mills' Plains there were visits from Massingberd, Quaker missionaries, James Backhouse and George Washignton Walker, surveyor John Helder Wedge and George Augustus Robinson and his "Friendly Mission". Glover himself joined John Batman on an ascent of Ben Lomond in January 1833, as well as making less adventurous excursions to call on Thomas Archer at "Woolmers" and his nearer neighbour Captain Barclay at "Cambock".

Yet there was no let-up in his painting. The recorded visit to the Barclay's was for a portrait sitting. In his more usual line, landscape, Glover's productivity approached his pre-migration levels. By the end of 1834 he had an exhibition's worth of pictures. ...

In Van Diemen's Land, the smoothness and gradual variation of the Burkean Beautiful were recognised in, or rather projected upon, the broad contours of the Tasmanian Midlands. On his first visit to Mills' Plains, Glover wrote to Emma Lord: "I think we shall live principally here, it also suits me because very rich and Picturesque ... I like the country much ...". A characterstic of this part of the island was the openness of the grasslands, described by one contemporary as "moderately wooded by small clumps of trees as if planted by the hand of man to ornament an estate"; Glover himself was to observe that "it is possible almost everywhere, to drive a carriage as easily as in a Gentleman's Park in England."' (D. Hansen, John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Hobart, 2003, pp.94-8).