Description
Rare, large c.18th portrait of Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney (1733-1800) whom the city of Sydney was named after by the famous American portrait artist Gilbert Charles Stuart (1755-1828).
As Home Secretary in the Pitt Government Sydney, was given responsibility for devising a plan to settle convicts at Botany Bay. Lord Sydney had favoured finding an alternative place of transportation, rather than the penitentiaries advocated by the prominent social reformer, Jeremy Bentham. In 1784, Sydney sponsored the Transportation Act which transferred responsibility for choosing such an alternative place, from Parliament to the Ministry. Lord Sydney had thought ‘it was observed that New South Wales would be a very proper region for the reception of criminals condemned to transportation’. In July 1786, the British cabinet came to accept Sydney’s recommendation that convicts be transported to Botany Bay. It was his choice of Arthur Phillip as the first Governor that ensured that the penal colony survived the early years of hardship. On 26 January 1788, Phillip named Sydney Cove in honour of Sydney and the settlement became known as Sydney Town. In 1789 Townshend was created Viscount Sydney.
