Flora and Fauna
Providing a contrast in subject, but just as revealing of the artist’s ways, were Percy Hockings’ closer observations of the wild life and plants. Subjects are given a botanist’s and naturalist’s treatment, profiled and notated, as if Hockings was there to record something new, which to him it was.
The angler fish is a great example, excepting one thing. He notes the type but not which of this species it is. The life size profile and colours suggest it’s either a painted angler fish or the black spotted angler fish. Both are common across the strait and tropical waters of the north, and the painted one comes in many colours, not just bright oranges as seen in many references. Whichever it is may not be that critical here. It’s what has been observed and has been brought to life again with its eyes firmly focused on the angler’s wand it uses as bait to catch its prey over its wide mouth.
Watercolour sketch of an angler fish in a sketchbook by Percy Hockings. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection, 00054409
Big letters carefully scripted say ‘Life size Angler Fish, caught Wanetta Slip 8th Sept 1923’. Then in more natural handwriting, Hockings gets down to anatomical details: ‘main feet 9 toes’. This is a key feature of angler fish fins and there is a correction at the bottom: ‘shown a little too green’. We can forgive him for that and thank him for pointing it out.
Turn over to another page and a bird looks back at you, delicately attached to the paper with fine lines around a light wash. Hockings notes Van Dyke brown for the body. About to move ahead, elegantly stepping off the page, this bird has been caught just in time. It seems to have caused great fascination to Hockings, and no wonder when you look at its customised legs and claws. The illustration focus on this wide foot print—long spindly claws and a many jointed assembly of toes and forward bending legs.
Even though it was not named, identifying this species was not hard. Its colour scheme and intriguing legs make it stand out easily in the bird books as the red crowned or comb-crested jacana (Irediparra gallinacea). A background can quickly be added in. Widespread in the tropics, also known as the lotusbird or lilytrotter and one of a kind, it’s fascinating set of legs enable this small bird to scoot over lilies on lakes.
Irediparra gallinacea / Comb-crested Jacana. Credit: sunphlo/Wikipedia Commons
Hockings’ plant drawings are classical too, broken into parts with colours mixed to bring out the hues. The one titled ‘Erithrina (sic) natural size’ is easily identified through well-depicted leaves and flowers. It is Erythrina vespertilio known to many as the Bat’s Wing Coral Tree and native to north and north-east Australia. Others might know it as Grey Corkwood or maybe just bean tree while one western desert Aboriginal language calls it ininti. Down south it’s less respected having escaped from parks where it was put in for show to become a weed in the bushland.
Hockings has done a very clever drawing on 20 September 1923. Working in layers and superimposing views, he has captured the principal aspects of leaf, flower and seed. The tree was either 55 feet tall, or 25 feet tall, both dimensions are noted, and maybe he is referring to two trees. Van Dyke brown comes out again for the seed pods. It’s been a useful tube, that one.
Landscapes
View of the town and the pearling fleet in the harbour, with Prince of Wales Island on the left and Friday Island on the right, Thursday Island. c. 1917–1920. Courtesy National Library of Australia, nla.pic-vn3117047
Quite a number of other scenes are landscapes, and many of the lugger images are set in a landscape too. All of them bring out a feel for the scene and its particular environment.
At the east end of Thursday Island, perched perhaps on an outcrop, Hockings looked down across the bay at low tide. As our eyes roam the scene, we realise this is a building and repair yard for the luggers. Parts of the spars and hulls show through, buildings begin to become apparent, a lugger and its diving pump stand out in the foreground. Closer still are two people on another rock. Were they there briefly, or were they needed to be there to complete the picture? The rolling hills that form the islands in the group step back in graduated colours.
Watercolour titled: Thursday Island from East by Percy Hockings. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection, 00054407
Watercolour by Percy Hockings titled 'Quarry at 3rd Emplacement', 1936. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection
This depth of field is repeated many years later. Hockings was back on Thursday Island in May 1936 and his skills had not diminished. At first glance ‘Quarry at 3rd Emplacement’ is a portrait of a boulder with the one front and centre sculpted in watercolours rather than by hand and tools, or just as likely dynamite. The closeness of the foreground gives way rapidly to the distance, a glimpse to the left of the sea. It looks windy down there. A bright blue with white streaks a clear day. Trade winds may be blowing down the channel.
The landscape that has me most captivated is one from 1919. The outline of a wharf heading to the right fits with this being just to the west and round the point from the main wharf. It’s a quick painting perhaps, but it’s wonderfully impressionist. Some instantaneous lines gave it a shape to fill in. Trunks of the palms are a single stroke of brown, leaves the same in green. Then two goes at a wash of green and we have foliage on the tree. A dab of orange picks out a feature in the road cutting as it rounds the point. It’s depicting a calm scene, despite the rapid nature of its creation on paper.
Watercolour by Percy Hockings dating from 1919. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection, 00054409
People
Sketch of George Sing by Percy Hockings, 1919. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection, 00054409
Percy Hockings also documented the social side of Thursday Island with images of the people, some marked with a bit of wry humour.
On 2 August 1919, a little boy George Sing was selling cabbages from a basket almost half his size. How do we know this?
Percy has sketched and painted George in two locations on the same page. The big image is a simple coloured rendition with a bare footed George trying to balance against the weight and awkwardness of the basket and cabbages, braces holding up his shorts, a grimace on his face. Percy let him pass, then sketched the reverse view in a few seconds of quick lines that once again pick up the motion and balance. It is a fleeting moment frozen in time.
The basket is now on his other arm. Maybe Percy showed interest so George stopped, hoping for a sale, but I think not. Despite the quite green looking cabbages, Percy notes them as ‘Weedy Cabbages 2/6 each’. Maybe he is like me, not a cabbage fan. At the top though we are left wondering what else he saw. Percy has pasted a newspaper headline cutting—it reads ‘MY LIFE IS AN OPEN BOOK’—then pencilled in ‘full of inscrutable riddles’.
Sketch of a diver by Percy Hockings, ANMM Collection
Japanese pearl diver, Thursday Island. SLQ Collection
One of the most delightful paintings was done in February 1917 on Buton Island South Sulawesi, then known as the Celebes, where Percy’s cousin Reginald Hockings had a plantation. Here is a street scene. You can feel the bright sunshine and heat, the sounds and people, the animals. It is painted over a copy of an original outline drawing and is unfinished, which adds to the atmosphere. The white to the top right accentuates the tropical sun and heat from the sky above. The foliage of the creeper on the wall is also still white, and gives the impression of picking up a strong reflection of light, raising the temperature of the day. In contrast, there is great detail to the scene of the men carrying the animals for slaughter, and like a photograph, it has depth of field. Things just happen to be there—two chooks on the roof, a cockerel bottom left, and a boy to the bottom right. Even the shade of the tree is captured. You can see a cool place someone has escaped to in the painting.
