South Australia Illustrated: Colonial Painting in the Land of Promise
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SOUTH AUSTRALIA ILLUSTRATED Colonial painting in the Land of Promise EDUCATION RESOURCE ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA North Terrace Adelaide artgallery.sa.gov.au SOUTH AUSTRALIA ILLUSTRATED Introduction outh Australia was unlike the other The exhibition, and selected works of art included Australian settlements, having been in this Education Resource, connects to the Australian planned in London as a province of Great Curriculum: history by engagement with and consideration Britain, not as a penal colony. It was of the following: promoted to potential immigrants as ‘the land of promise’. • What life was like for the Aboriginal people before the GeorgeS French Angas’s major promotional publication arrival of Europeans South Australia Illustrated featured a series of his sketches • Why Europeans settled in South Australia and watercolours and showed the unfamiliar but strangely • The nature and consequence of contact between beautiful environment. It was released in London from Aboriginal people and settlers 1846 and continued to ‘sell’ the colony to those looking • How the South Australian colony developed over time, for adventure and prosperity. and how it changed the environment. The prints, drawings, watercolours and oil paintings In association with South Australia Illustrated: colonial displayed in this exhibition, which has been curated by painting in the Land of Promise are the exhibitions Bounty: Jane Hylton, provide a colonial narrative that covers nineteenth-century South Australian gold and silver, and South the exploration of South Australia, its settlement and Australia Illustrated: from the street. development, and colonial life. Works by ‘settler artists’ Bounty, curated by Robert Reason, provides an insight William Light, Martha Berkeley and J.M. Skipper, among into aspects of nineteenth-century colonial society through others, give impressions of the landscape of the 1830s and decorative art and jewellery, including church silver, also show the interactions between the Indigenous people presentation objects for important events, and ceremonial and settlers. These are followed by S.T. Gill’s lively street items. The work of South Australia’s early goldsmiths and scenes, James Shaw’s recordings of colonial ‘events’, and silversmiths, Julius Schomburgk and Henry Steiner, is Charles Hill’s portraits and places. Alexander Schramm, featured. painting in the 1850s, focuses on the Aboriginal people of South Australia Illustrated: from the street, curated by Lisa the Adelaide Plains, whose way of life was greatly disrupted Slade, shows the work of contemporary South Australian by the arrival of white settlers. artists, including Ali Baker, James Dodd and Peter Drew, The arrival of so many talented artists, some of them as they respond to the Art Gallery of South Australia’s professional artists, in one place, meant that the colony of colonial art collection. Applying the visual language of the South Australia was home to a dynamic visual arts scene. streets through the use of paste-ups, stencilling and aerosol Later in the century, many artists, including Rosa Fiveash, paining, their work is displayed both in the Gallery and on demonstrated the developing sophistication of life and art the streets of Adelaide. in the colony through their genre paintings. A William Woolnoth William Woolnoth, engraver, Britain, active 1806-1836, after William Westall, Britain/Australia, 1781–1850, View of the north side of Kangaroo Island from Views of Australian scenery, c.1814, London; published by G. & W. Nicol, London, 1814, etching, engraving on paper, 16.0 x 23.0 cm (image); South Australian Government Grant 1969. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide otential settlers from England and After Westall returned to England some of his paintings Europe relied, for information about were copied by an engraver, Mr William Woolnoth. This South Australia, on handmade maps and was a usual practice in the publishing industry, at a time pictures, as well as journals produced before photography was widely used. Engravings of as a result of scientific expeditions Westall’s paintings were then printed in illustrated books undertakenP by navigators such as Captain Matthew describing journeys of exploration. Flinders and Captain James Cook. The professional artists This black line engraving by Woolnoth has the same who accompanied the expeditions were employed to name as Westall’s original painting of Kangaroo Island. It record these newly discovered lands and places. was included in a picture book publicising new lands in Artist William Westall was just nineteen years old when, South Australia, called Views of Australian scenery, printed in in the early 1880s, he accompanied Flinders on his journey London in 1814. from England to map the coasts of Australia. Westall’s job was to depict Australian lands for the expedition’s sponsors, FOCUS QUESTIONS AND actiVITIES who were also often future settlers. • Why is this work of art an important visual record? On Kangaroo Island Westall went ashore from the • Explain why the coastline was the landscape feature moored Investigator, taking with him portable art materials, most often recorded by early navigators and exploration including pencil and charcoal. He made observational artists. drawings of new plants, animals and coastal views. Back • Find another work in this exhibition by Westall. on board he would complete watercolour or oil paintings Consider the locations selected and the detail of the from these drawings. Westall was a keen observer, his line scene recorded. How might this view of Australian work showing great sensitivity, particularly his animal scenery have supported immigration to the new drawings. colony? This ‘view’ gives the impression of a land of abundance • List the ways in which features of newly discovered and plenty, a tranquil land: seals are sunning themselves; Australian lands were recorded in the early 1880s. If kangaroos and emus are grazing. The background hills are you were an explorer today, what different methods densely covered with natural vegetation. would you be able to use to record your discoveries? B William Light olonel William Light was South Australia’s first surveyor-general. He was fifty years old when he arrived in South Australia in 1836. He became known for his hard work and for hisC considerable artistic talent. Given his surveying role, Light had to quickly understand the natural environment. Because the settlement had to sustain domestic, farming and agricultural uses, easy access to fresh water and arable land was necessary. The settlement also had to be in a location large enough to support its growth into a city, and it had to be close to a harbour. During his short time as surveyor-general, Light came under enormous pressure and received unfair criticism from the distant bureaucrats in London – as well as many local people in South Australia – over his choice of the site for the settlement. But interestingly, Light always looked on the design of Adelaide from the viewpoint of an immigrant, as well as of the surveyor-general. He always intended to make his home in Adelaide and wanted to leave his mark on the place he surveyed. It is thanks to Light that Adelaide has wide streets, a belt of surrounding parklands, and five city squares. As an artist as well as a surveyor and planner, Light William Light, 1786–1839, Self portrait, c.1839, Adelaide, oil on canvas, combined his knowledge of cartography, topography, 58.1 x 42.2 cm; Gift of G.G. Mayo on behalf of his father, the late George surveying, and art to produce many sketches and paintings Mayo, FRCS 1905. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide that brought to life the early years of the settlement. Unfortunately, Light’s residence, a small hut, caught fire FOCUS QUESTIONS AND actiVITIES in January 1839, and many of his works of art, as well as official and private papers, were destroyed. • The canvas seems to have been re-used. What clue is This painting is an unfinished self-portrait. Art there for this? historians think it was begun by Light in the last year of his life. The feverish look suggested by the rosy cheeks may • If you could interview William Light, what be because Light was ill at the time. The painting gives the questions would you ask him about his surveying impression of being unfinished. of the settlement site and his designs for the city of Almost two hundred years after the portrait was made, Adelaide? Research the controversy regarding Light’s contemporary South Australian artist Peter Drew has taken selection of the site for Adelaide. the enigmatic self portrait of Light and created his own • Who were Adelaide’s five squares named after? What version of the portrait using stencilling and aerosol. Drew did these people contribute to the development of has also invited twelve other South Australian artists (Jake Adelaide? Bresanello, James Cochran, Sam Evans, Kate Gagliardi, • Paint a self-portrait in colonial fashion. Jake Holmes, Madeline Reece, Garry Seaman, Matthew • Now try making a self-portrait using a street art Stuckey, Joel Van Der Knaap, Dan Withey and Kerri Ann styling. Wright) to create their own versions of the portrait in their signature styles. During the project these portraits Learn more about immigration from the Maritime will be set free on the streets of Adelaide for members of Museum link: www.history.sa.gov.au/maritime/edu/ the public to collect. docs/southwardbound.pdf C Martha Berkeley Martha Berkeley, 1813–1899, Mount Lofty from The Terrace, Adelaide, c.1840, Adelaide, watercolour on paper, 34.5 x 45.0 cm; South Australian Government Grant 1935. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide artha Berkeley and her husband, Charles, FOCUS QUESTIONS AND actiVITIES arrived in South Australia in February 1837. Martha was an artist and Charles was a police officer. They spent the first • Find out more about the traditional hunting eight months of life in Adelaide living in a tent on the and gathering practices of the Kaurna people of M Mikawomma (the Kaurna name for the Adelaide banks of the River Torrens.