Sir Francis Forbes

The University of Sydney was founded by an Act of the Parliament of New South Wales in 1850, the first university in the British Empire outside Britain itself, although much older institutions like Harvard (1636) and Yale (1701) were established in the American colonies before the Revolution. The new University was inaugurated in Big School in October 1852 and began teaching its first 24 students there later in the month; but almost at once it became apparent that there were no adequate secondary schools in the colony. Accordingly, by another Act of Parliament closely modelled on the University Act, Sydney Grammar School was established in 1854 to prepare matriculants for the University. In 1857, the University moved to its present site at Grose Farm, and the first pupils began to be taught at College Street.

Sydney Grammar School has historically taken 1857 as its effective foundation year. 1907 was thus considered its Jubilee Year and 1957 was celebrated as a Centenary; 2007 was the Sesquicentenary and 2057 will be its Bicentenary. But this choice, although defensible, has had the unfortunate consequence of casting the School’s prehistory into relative obscurity. For in fact the land that Grammar occupies today was granted to the first of its two precursor institutions by Governor Brisbane in 1825, and the original Sydney Public Free Grammar School opened two hundred years ago, in 1826. Unfortunately, Laurence Halloran’s school fell victim to the economic depression and drought of the 1820s, exacerbated by controversy about the behaviour of his son and assistant, and closed later in the same year.

The grammar school movement was revived with the establishment of Sydney College in 1830. Teaching began in 1835 under the able headmastership of WT Cape, who brought sixty pupils with him from his private King Street Academy. After a disagreement with the committee, however, Cape left in 1842, followed again by many of the boys, to form a new private school, Elfred House in Paddington. The College declined in the years that followed, undermined by the depression of the 1840s, and finally closed in 1850. But it had already played a vital part in colonial education, and half of the first two dozen young men admitted to the University in 1852 were alumni either of the College or of Elfred House; three more were taught by Dr William Wools, a former assistant Classics master at the College.

In June 2026, the School commemorated these early decades by rehanging the oldest portrait in our collection in the entrance foyer of the War Memorial Building. It depicts Sir Francis Forbes, chairman of the Committee of the original Grammar School and subsequently President of the College. This portrait was commissioned by the College to mark his retirement in 1836 and painted in England by Conway Weston Hart while Forbes was there on sick leave in 1836–37. It arrived in Sydney in January 1838 and was displayed in Big School until 1857, when it was taken to the new University; there it hung in the Great Hall until 1948, when it was returned to College Street.

Pictured: Charles Rodius, Portrait of Sir Francis Forbes, c. 1831-35
Charcoal and crayon, 29 x 23 cm
State Library of NSW

Pictured: Conway Weston Hart, Portrait of Sir Francis Forbes,
1837 Oil on canvas, 165 x 126 cm
Sydney Grammar School

Sir Francis Forbes (1784–1841) was an important figure in the early history of New South Wales, but like so many in those years had broader connections throughout the Empire. He was born in Bermuda to an old Scottish family and later married the daughter of a Scottish doctor from Jamaica who was practising in London. He was called to the Bar in London in 1812 and returned to Bermuda as Attorney-General. In 1816 he went to St John’s in Newfoundland as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and in 1824 he arrived with his family in Sydney, under Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane (1821–25) as the first Chief Justice of the reorganised Supreme Court of New South Wales.

Twenty-five years after the arrival of the First Fleet, the colony was growing rapidly, and Forbes was instrumental in setting up the legal framework of a civil society, including the regulations of a Legislative Council to advise the Governor and the introduction of trial by jury, in what had previously been a penal colony under military command. He also supported the freedom of the press, incurring the hostility of Governor Darling (1825–31), Brisbane’s successor; a leading citizen – second in rank only to the Governor himself – and the father of three sons, he took an active interest in colonial education. As President of Sydney College, he laid the foundation stone of Big School with much ceremony on 26 of January 1830.

A first portrait of Forbes was drawn by the colonial artist Charles Rodius (1802–60) around 1831–1835; Rodius, the best portraitist of this period in Australia, taught drawing to Forbes’ sons and later at College Street. Rodius’ drawing is a very fine work, but a private rather than public portrait and thus more concerned with the man than with his role and status in society. The Chief Justice appears relaxed and affable, yet keenly alert; but in reality his health had always been delicate. Confrontations with Governor Darling and powerful colonists like Macarthur had reduced him to such a state of nervous exhaustion that he had already applied for sick leave in 1834, although he did not sail to England until April 1836. Before he left, Governor Bourke (1831–37) recommended him for a knighthood, which was conferred in April 1837.

Upon Forbes’ departure for England he also resigned his position as President of Sydney College. He was farewelled at a formal occasion on 13 April 1836 by the proprietors, 48 of whom contributed to the cost of a commemorative portrait, to be painted during his stay in England. The speech that was addressed to him and his reply were printed in The Colonist a few weeks later on Thursday 5 May. He said, most notably, ‘It is a proposition too evident in itself to require any argument… that upon the due education of a people will depend their degree of civilisation and rank in the scale of nations. Religion, arts, commerce, political freedom, and public happiness, all follow in the train of early instruction…’

In his right hand he holds a volume which unfortunately lacks any identifying title on the spine; his index finger is in the book as though to save his place. This is a very old motif that originates with late medieval and Renaissance images of the Annunciation, in which the Virgin, interrupted in her reading, keeps her place with a finger or thumb, and also appears in an early portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (c. 1565) acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in June 2026. Sir Francis’ left arm rests on the arm of the chair; in a letter written in 1837, he confides to a friend that his illness has left him almost paralysed in this arm.

On the left of the composition the view extends across Hyde Park, proclaimed by Governor Philip and named by Macquarie, but still a barren wasteland nothing like its namesake in London until the programme of tree planting that began in the 1850s. In the distance we can make out the College with Big School’s row of tall windows; but the structure extends tentatively to the left, for this was only meant to be the centre of a far more ambitious edifice. Maclehose’s Picture of Sydney (1838–1839) reproduces the elevation facing Hyde Park as originally intended. It also includes, as a separate fold-out sheet, a view of Hyde Park with ‘The New Catholic Chapel’ on the left and ‘Sydney College as Completed’ on the right. In 1837, so soon after the successful launch of the College, Forbes must have expected that the building would soon be finished as planned.

A classical column frames the view; this was a perfectly conventional motif except that the artist seems to forget that it is a column and merges it into the wall on the right. But neither this indecisive column nor the view of Hyde Park and Sydney College appears in two other portraits of Sir Francis which seem to have been copied from the Hart original after its arrival in Sydney. One of these is in the State Library and the other at the Supreme Court of NSW.

Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian at the State Library, suggests that their copy, presumably posthumous but very competently executed, may be by Maurice Felton (1803–42) who came out to Sydney in 1839 as a ship’s surgeon before turning his hand to portraiture. The artist has closely followed Hart in the head and costume, but added a red curtain in the background and, because of his closer view of the torso, changed the position of the right hand. The palette of this picture is altogether warmer in temperature and more chromatically saturated than the original and in these respects closer to Felton’s manner.

The second copy may well be based on the State Library version, since it reproduces the red curtain – rather perfunctorily – but includes more of the figure, now seen standing and dressed in judicial robes. This version is attributed to the convict artist Joseph Backler (1813–95), and as Neville writes, ‘was installed in the Banco Court in 1845 when it was described by The Sentinel on 5 November 1845 as a very wretched daub, “bearing not the remotest resemblance to the original.”’ The timeline of the three portraits would thus be 1837 for Hart’s original; around 1841–42 for Felton’s copy; and 1845 for Backler’s version.

When the portrait returned to College Street in 1948, it was first hung, as John Sheldon records in The Big School Room at Sydney Grammar School (1997), in Big School over the eastern doors leading out towards H Room (now H5). Then after renovations in the early 1980s, it was moved to the Trustees’ Room (today the Headmaster’s School Room). It seems to have been moved to the AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson Library while Dr Townsend was Headmaster. Dr Vallance brought it back to the Headmaster’s Study, where it hung over the fireplace in his time and during that of his successor, Dr Malpass. And now, with the arrival of Mr McPherson, it has finally found its way to the threshold of the School, to remind boys, staff and visitors of a history that extends back to the earliest days of education in Australia.

Pictured: Maurice Felton (attr.), Portrait of Sir Francis Forbes, c. 1841-2
Oil on canvas, State Library of NSW

Pictured: Joseph Backler (attr.), Portrait of Sir Francis Forbes, c. 1845
Oil on canvas, Banco Court, Queens Square