Robert Hoddle, a surveyor who worked in country New South Wales in the early 1830s is best known for his involvement in the laying out of Melbourne’s streets in 1837. Hoddle spent the rest of his life in that city. He was himself an active watercolour painter, and many of his views of regional NSW have survived.

Hoddle appears to have lent his early sketches to a number of Melbourne artists in the 1860s and 1870s, but his motivation for this is unclear, as it seems he did not subsequently purchase works made from his drawings.

Thomas Clark was an established Melbourne landscape painter, and drawing master at Victoria’s National Gallery.