Frederick Rushbrook CLAUSE

Dr Frederick Rushbrook Clause was the surgeon on board the HMS Success, on Captain James Stirling’s expedition to the Swan River in March 1827. Clause accompanied Stirling on an eight-day survey of the river with the expeditions’ artist Frederick Garling, and botanist Charles Fraser. Fraser’s manuscript describes the pool painted by Clause as ‘an extensive lagoon of fresh water covered with immense Metrosideros the banks of which are covered with the most beautiful plants’. This scene is thus identifiable as a lagoon on the small stream of Claisebrook in what is now East Perth, where the party camped the first night. Clause’s Lagoon was the sight of the expedition’s first encounter with the local indigenous people, depicted in this painting.

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