The Visit of Hope to Sydney Cove, 1789, c.1870
Henry Apperley (1817-1880)
Plaster "bas relief"
Diameter: 42cm

Henry Apperley was a sculptor who worked on the London Houses of Parliament prior to emigrating to Australia in 1854 as part of the gold rushes. He worked in Melbourne producing sculptures and in 1868 moved to Sydney where he worked on the Rookwood Mortuary Station. In 1871 and 1872 Apperley exhibited "The Visit of Hope to Sydney Cove, 1789" at the Academy of Art and at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition respectively. Apperley gave one copy of the bas relief to The Free Public Library and this is the only other extant copy.

Apperley's bas relief of 1870 is an enlarged copy of the Wedgwood Sydney Cove medallion of 1789 modelled by Henry Webber. The Sydney Cove medallion was made from Sydney clay, dug at Sydney Cove in 1788 and sent by Governor Arthur Phillip to Sir Joseph Banks, who passed it onto Josiah Wedgwood of the Wedgwood company.

This plaster bas relief depicts the allegorical figures of Hope, Peace, Art and Labour on the shores of Sydney Harbour, rendered in a neoclassical style, at the time when Australia was first settled by Europeans in 1789. The allegorical figures represent an optimistic vision of the colony's future development where there is employment, including the production of art and where peace reigns. The use of allegorical figures in classical drapery and the bas relief form, recall the art of ancient Greece and Rome and reflects the fashion for neoclassicism in Europe at the time.