Cobb and Co.

Cobb and Co. is a 1925 drypoint print that depicts a lone stagecoach as it travels across the vast expanse of the Australian outback. The coach is pulled by five horses which canter majestically through the scrubby bush. It is hard to tell at this distance who the four coach passengers might be. Are the men in sunhats gold prospectors, delivery men or more well-to-do travellers? This ambiguity points to the painting’s timeless, romantic quality. Above the coach clouds float through the endless desert sky. Cobb and Co. was created using the drypoint technique, and Lindsay has varied his use of line to give a sense of the lightness of the clouds in contrast to the sketchily drawn bush.

Cobb and Co. stage coaches would have been a common sight during Lindsay’s childhood in the Victorian former goldfields, as they were the main means of transporting people and goods to isolated rural towns. They were also prominent in local folk legends as the targets of marauding bush rangers looking for gold. By the early twentieth century however, horse-drawn Cobb and Co. coaches were on the decline as they struggled to compete with railways and early automobiles. Indeed, the print poignantly dates from a year after the last ever horse-drawn Cobb and Co. coach journey was undertaken in Australia. Cobb and Co. is therefore evidence of Lindsay’s well-known sentimental love of tradition and hatred of industrial modernity.

Cobb and Co. tapped into a deep Australian nostalgia for the mid to late nineteenth century, and subsequently had a more interesting history than Lindsay could have  foreseen but which would certainly have pleased him. In 1955, Australia issued two stamps (3 1/2d and 2 shillings), commemmorating their country's mail-coach pioneers, both of which used designs based on Lindsay's print.

According to an anecdote told by Sir John Ilott, who donated Cobb and Co. to the National Art Gallery – Te Papa Tongarewa’s predecessor – in 1964; "[t]he last owner of Cobb and Co coaches in Australia was a wealthy man who had retired and lived in a town in Queensland. He was so thrilled when he saw one of his coaches depicted on an Australian stamp that he wrote to the Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies to know whether he could obtain the original. Sir Robert referred him to the Artist [sic], who sent him the Etching [sic]. As a result he gave a really fine Gallery [sic] named the Sir Lionel Lindsay Gallery, to the town where he lives – the Donor bearing the entire costs which were substantial."

In a slightly garbled way, Ilott was referring to the Lionel Lindsay Art Gallery and Library, Toowoomba, established by local transport owner and philanthropist Bill Bolton (1905–1973), and which opened in 1959. Bolton had a collection of 28 horse and carriage vehicles which in turn provided the basis for his private museum in Toowoomba, which is now the Cobb & Co Museum.

There are two impressions of this print in Te Papa's collection; this one was donated by the widow of London art dealer Harold Wright; the other came from Wright's good friend Ilott (1964-0001-22).

Sources:

Julianne Malpas, ‘An Incurable Collector: Sir John Ilott (1884-1973) and his Passion for Prints’ (unpublished MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2005)

David Maskill (ed.), Before Addled Art – The Graphic Art of Lionel Lindsay (Wellington: Adam Art Gallery, 2003)

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   August 2018