A fine example of sublime painting in colonial Australia; painted by Edward Boulton Baker (1812-1895) who arrived from England in 1836 and settled at Walcha in New South Wales. Clearly a talented and trained artist he travelled extensively throughout the state from his country property "Bergen-op-Zoom" making visits also to Tasmania and Victoria recording the landscape. Recognised in his lifetime for "… the sunlit effects of the characteristic Australian landscape…" Boulton regularly showed his paintings at exhibitions including the 1849 Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia; the New South Wales Academy of Arts exhibitions of 1874,1875 and 1877; and the Loan Exhibition of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales of 1897.

A fine example of sublime painting in colonial Australia; painted by Edward Boulton Baker (1812-1895) who arrived from England in 1836 and settled at Walcha in New South Wales. Clearly a talented and trained artist he travelled extensively throughout the state from his country property "Bergen-op-Zoom" making visits also to Tasmania and Victoria recording the landscape. Recognised in his lifetime for "… the sunlit effects of the characteristic Australian landscape…" Boulton regularly showed his paintings at exhibitions including the 1849 Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia; the New South Wales Academy of Arts exhibitions of 1874,1875 and 1877; and the Loan Exhibition of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales of 1897.

The latter exhibition lists at number 341 a painting by Boulton entitled "Sunset from Darling Point", which may possibly be this painting (although dated 1853) as we know that Boulton's city residence was at Darling Point until at least 1861. He moved to "The Rangers" at Mosman, in the late nineteenth century and was actively painting in that area during the 1870s and 1880s.

The original Aboriginal name for the area was Yarranabbee; it was renamed Mrs Darling's Point in honour of the wife of Ralph Darling, Governor of New South Wales from 1825-1831. It was not until the subdivisions in the late 1830s that the Sydney suburb became known as Darling Point.

The aspect of Darling Point depicted in this watercolour is a view looking west down Loftus Street, an area that was part of the Glenhurst Estate. To the right of the painting is a rotunda or pavillion which may, or may not have existed. It is possibly an imaginative and romanticised addition to the work by the artist. If it did exist, then this ornamental structure may perhaps have been an unrecorded gatehouse to the stately Victorian Italianate mansion "Glenhurst" built for solicitor George Evans.

In 1884 the colonial architect John Horbury Hunt designed a prominent Victorian Gothic house,"Cloncorrick", for the Honourable George Simpson at roughly this position on Loftus street; the house still stands today at the corner of three roads, Darling Point Road, Annandale and Loftus Streets. To the left of Loftus Street Boulton depicts the aesthetically pleasing Gothic building originally known as St. Canice, built in the 1860s. It later became the Jean Colvin Hospital and today is in private ownership.

Painting from a higher position on the ridge that is Darling Point Road, Boulton gazes down the steep hill of Loftus Street. People are picturesquely depicted admiring the spectacular vision that is stretching out to the west - Sydney harbour dotted with sailing boats, Garden Island and the distant city awesomely bathed in a sublime sunset.

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