During May 1851 George French Angas was sketching in Illawarra when news of Australia’s first gold rush reached him. He returned to Sydney and, crossing the Blue Mountains by foot, became the first artist to reach the Ophir goldfield near Bathurst. Within a few days he had made a series of fine sketches, portraying the mountainous setting and the detailed activity of hundreds of miners at the site. In Sydney these sketches were transformed into lithographs by Angas himself and published by Woolcott and Clarke of George St, as Six Views of the Gold Field of Ophir, At Summerhill and Lewis’ Ponds Creeks; Drawn from Nature and on Stone, by George French Angas.
Angas soon realised that his goldfield images would appeal to a wider audience, and on 30 July 1851 he sent a new, variant set of sketches by one ship to his London publisher, J. Hogarth, and a ‘safety’ set of tracings of the Australian set by a second ship. After some delay Hogarth had the new sketches lithographed by Hullmandel and Walton, issuing them uncoloured during mid-1852 as Views of the Gold Regions of Australia, drawn on the spot by G.F. Angus [sic].
The issued prints did not quite square with the contents list, as a new frontispiece was included and Plate 6 (Arrival of Gold Diggers at Bathurst on their way to Ophir) was omitted. A limited number of hand-coloured sets were also produced.
The plates are: I Frontispiece; II Gold Washing at Summerhill Creek; III Gold diggers' encampment; IV Fitzroy Bar; V General view of Ophir; VI Summerhill Creek and Part of Church Hill
