This comprehensive survey uniquely covers both Aboriginal art and that of European Australians, providing a revealing examination of the interaction between the two. Painting, bark art, photography, rock art, sculpture, and the decorative arts are all fully explored to present the rich texture of Australian art traditions. Well-known artists such as Margaret Preston, Rover Thomas, and Sidney Nolan are all discussed, as are the natural history illustrators, Aboriginal draughtsmen, and pastellists, whose work is only now being brought to light by new research. Taking the European colonization of the continent in 1788 as his starting point, Sayers highlights important issues concerning colonial art and women artists in this fascinating new story of Australian art.

Australian Art (Oxford History of Art)

Arts & Photography

Sayers, Andrew

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century

Andrew Sayers examines a considerable body of drawings produced by Aboriginal artists between 1803 and 1903. Never before collected as a genre, these works are retained in museums, libraries, or private hands and have rarely been displayed. Often regarded as inauthentic art because of their stylistic borrowings and fluctuations, they enjoy a unique status as products of the interaction between Aboriginal society and the British colonizers. The largest group of drawings comes from the hands of three artists--Tommy McCrae (c1823-1901), William Barak (c1824-1903), and Ulladulla Mickey (c1820-1891), who produced their drawings in the 1880s and 1890s. Visually these drawings are varied, but they possess many of the aesthetic qualities which characterize contemporary Aboriginal art, displaying intense vitality and an acute understanding of flora and fauna.

Sayers examines a considerable body of drawings produced by Aboriginal artists between 1803 and 1903. Often regarded as inauthentic art because of their stylistic borrowings and fluctuations, these objects are products of the interaction between Aboriginal society and the British colonizers. The largest group of drawings comes from three artists: Tommy McCrae, William Barak, and Ulladulla Mickey. Visually their drawings are varied, but they possess many of the aesthetic qualities which characterize contemporary Aboriginal art, displaying intense vitality and an acute understanding of flora and fauna.

This publication accompanies a major exhibition organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the National Gallery of Australia. It features some fifty American and fifty Australian landscape paintings produced during the period when landscape became the focus for artists in both countries. In both traditions landscapes trace the ever-changing complexities of bringing what is known to the experience of the unknown, exploring the profound relationship that we have with the land on which we live. Many of America's finest landscape painters are represented, including Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer, and William Merritt Chase. Australian artists include Joseph Lyatt, Augustus Earle, John Glover, Eugene von Guerard, Louis Buvelot, and Arthur Streeton, among others.

New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian & American Landscapes

Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin

Ellis, Amy

Johns, Elizabeth

National Gallery of Australia

Wadsworth Atheneum

Thames&Hudson

Sidney Nolan built a compelling narrative around the figure of Ned Kelly, the colourful and wronged anti-hero in his homemade armour, and the comic-opera police who pursue him through the vast and featureless Australian bush landscape. The mythologizing of Ned Kelly did not start with Nolan's paintings, but his images remain the most enduring and instantly recognisable versions. With the stark black silhouette of Ned Kelly, Nolan found his most powerful symbol and poetic metaphor for Australians' relationship with their land.Nolan returned to the subject of Ned Kelly throughout his painting life but the later works never matched the freshness, immediacy and intensity of the first series. Nolan's unforgettable depictions of the Australian bush and the country's history and folklore have earned him a place in the Australian imagination unrivalled by any other painter.

Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly: The Ned Kelly Paintings in the National Gallery of Australia

BAIL, MURRAY

Nolan, Sidney

Individual Artists

Natl Gallery of Australia

Sidney Nolan: The Ned Kelly Story

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portraits by John Brack

National Portrait Gallery

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