Art in colonial Australia

This gallery displays Australian art from the colonial period and into the early twentieth century, highlighting the influence of European traditions on the visual culture of the various colonies. Works exploring the Australian landscape, for instance, follow the picturesque and topographical traditions established in England during the eighteenth century.

Over the nineteenth century, however, European settlers in Australia became increasingly at home in their surroundings, and their art reflects this changing relationship. The botanical watercolours of Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe, sketched at Alpha, Central Queensland in 1883-85, represent the work of the artists who documented the Australian natural world.

On the opposite wall is JA Clark’s Panorama of Brisbane, the most important painting produced in colonial Queensland. Commissioned for the Queensland Court in the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, this painting acted as a sign of the colony’s progress and prosperity.

During the century, Indigenous Australians interacted with settler artists in many ways. JH Carse’s Wallaga Lake near Bega, NSW 1877, for example, depicts an Indigenous family, in a somewhat nostalgic reference to the original occupants of this land. The Queensland shields and baskets demonstrate the visual skills of Indigenous people; and the pastels by Oscar Fristrom harness the new medium of photography to record them.

Portraiture, genre subjects, nature studies and decorative arts objects were all important, and the wide range of artistic forms included painting, printing, furniture-making and metalwork. Colonial Australians furnished and embellished their homes with enthusiasm, thus furniture and silverwork in various styles is a special feature of this display.