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Section 3

The Progress of Art

 

The colonisation of Australia, which proceeded from the voyages of discovery in the Pacific, is documented in the work of many artists. In the early days of the settlement in New South Wales those artists were either convicts-usually forgers like Watling and Lycett-or Navy men. Like John Lewin, the first free professionally-trained artist in the colony, they sought to capture the strange new flora and fauna for an eager audience back home. European artistic conventions and taste made appreciation of the Australian landscape more difficult. Images recording the 'progress of art'-or civilisation-over the reign of nature were, however, considered very pleasing. The terrible cost of that 'progress' is also recorded in the displacement and destruction of Australia's indigenous people and their culture.

An ongoing experiment in the transplantation of European culture and peoples, the colonisation of Australia received a much-needed boost from the discovery of gold, which delivered people and money in sufficient quantities to ensure the experiment's survival.

 

1. The Botanic Macaroni
London: M. Darly, 14 November 1772

2. John Hunter, 1737-1821
New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax)
plate 91 of Birds and Flowers of New South Wales Drawn on the Spot in 1788, '89 and '90
1788-1790

3. Henry Brewer, 1739-1796
The Port Jackson Painter, fl.1788-1792

4. John William Lewin, 1770-1819
[Two Kangaroos in a Landscape] 1819

5. Joseph Lycett, 1775-c.1829
Hibiscus grandiflora, Australia c.1820

6. Nicholas Matthew Condy, 1799-1857
Convict Hulks at Gravesend, England c.1830

7. Edwin Stocqueler, 1829-c1857
Night Corroboree of Australian Natives c.1850

8. Lieut Robert Dale, 1810-1856,
engraver Robert Havell, 1769-1832
Panoramic View of King George's Sound, Part of the Colony of Swan River 1834 (detail)

9. W.S. Hatton
Fremantle with Rottnest Island in the Distance 1859

10. Eugene Von Guerard, 1811-1901
James Glass's Station on the Goulburn River, Victoria 1862

 

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A selection of images from the Paradise Possessed exhibition.

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