(Bush landscape with waterfall, New South Wales)

This rare oil painting by John Skinner Prout most likely depicts Willoughby Falls near Sydney. The luxuriantly forested landscape is filled with native plants and animals, appealing to an English Romantic taste for exotica. An idealised, Arcadian view, it is removed from the reality of European settlement at this time and its detrimental effects on the Indigenous population.

This painting was incorrectly recorded on several occasions as depicting a scene in Tasmania, where Prout worked between 1844 and 1848. A close study of the flora and fauna in the painting, however, substantiates that it is a NSW setting.