Christie’s London Press
Office will auction on October 9 two of earliest
views of Singapore, dating to around ten years after the British landed.
First
settled by company agent and Lieutenant Governor of Bencoolen, Sir Stamford
Raffles and his East India Company flotilla in 1819, the first view of the
settlement is thought to be the pencil sketch by Lieutenant Philip Jackson,
dated 4 June 1824, showing Mount Sophia and the wooden attap houses on the
north bank of the river.
The present panorama of Singapore from Mount Wallich
(named for Dr Nathaniel Wallich who co-founded the Botanical Gardens with
Raffles in 1822), shows from left, Mount Erskine and its bungalow, with
Government Hill (after 1859 known as Fort Canning Hill) and its bungalow
(Government House) and flagstaff, the bungalow built by Raffles in 1823 and
subsequently purchased by the Straits Government and the home of the British
Resident in Singapore, to the right of this, John Argyll Maxwell's house (from
1843 government offices and Court House), and Telok Ayer Street, lined with
shophouses, runs near the coastline, with Telok Ayer market (built in 1825) jutting out into the
sea. Mount Wallich was levelled in the 1870s and Maxwell Road runs through the
site today.
The second view shows how Government Hill dominated
the view taken from the sea, or roadstead.
Janssen, an itinerant Prussian-born artist, known
primarily for his Brazilian and Australian views, was in Singapore in 1837-8,
in between his stay in Calcutta (where he resided from the early 1830s), and
before sailing on to the Philippines and his eventual destination, Sydney,
where he arrived in December 1840, and where he would settle for the rest of
his career.