Rose's Mill

Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949) was influential in promoting Australian art to a broader public during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1906 he founded the advertising company of Smith and Julius, incorporating quality art and design with technically advanced printing. He then founded the periodicals <em>Art in Australia</em> (1916) and<em> Home</em> (1920) and established the publishing company Ure Smith Pty Ltd in 1934, producing numerous texts of key significance to Australian art. President of the Society of Artists 1921-48, trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales 1927-47, patron of many artists, and active in numerous positions of influence, he was himself a competent practising artist and a central figure in Australia's version of the Etching Revival. He studied at the Julian Ashton School of Art (1902-07), and continued to be active until the mid-1920s. 

Rose's Mill, Mt. Gilead, was an early colonial structure that survived as a picturesque semi-ruin by the time of Ure Smith's etching (c. 1920). It still survives as a tower. Located in Gilead, near Campbelltown, it was built by Thomas Rose for his estate in 1836 from sandstone quarried on the property and ironbark timber also from the property. It was 60 feet high and reputed to have contained the finest millstones in the colony. It remained in active operation until about 1877. From the state of the deterioration of the sails, it is definitely later than another etching, <em>The Old Mill, Mt. Gilead</em> (1915).

See: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 'The old mill, Mt. Gilead |1915| Sydney Ure Smith', https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/DA72.1962/

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    May 2018