George Seymour Owen’s (1844-1921) watercolours provide an accurate record of the early heritage of Brisbane and the Moreton Bay area. House under Bowen Terrace, Brisbane 1889 (illustrated) of a cottage in inner-city Bowen Terrace, is a detailed representation of a home in the young township of Brisbane.
The watercolour shows the unquarried cliff along which Bowen Terrace runs rising behind the cottage at the Petrie Bight Reach of the Brisbane River where the Story Bridge now connects Kangaroo Point with Petrie Bight, and the refurbished Howard Smith Wharves. Owen’s works are of considerable significance to Queensland as they are quite rare, amongst the earliest depictions of the Brisbane area at its time of settlement.
George Seymour Owen ‘House under Bowen Terrace’ 1889
Bowen Terrace cliffs c.1868
G P Wright Petrie’s Bight and wharves c.1874-79
Bowen Terrace cliffs c.1880
Isaac Walter Jenner ‘Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm’ 1888
In the late 1890s William Howard Smith and Sons Pty Ltd, an entrepreneurial shipping company moved from the Commercial Wharf on the town reach to below Bowen Terrace occupying the river frontage until the 1930s. Renamed and rebuilt as Brisbane Central Wharves, the wharves were expanded to provide relief work during the depression years and in conjunction with the construction of the Story Bridge — beginning 24 May 1935 and opening to traffic on 6 July 1940.
Inner-city Bowen Terrace, Petrie Bight Reach of the Brisbane River is a historically significant riverfront location. Today the Howard Smith Wharves celebrates its origins in the development of Brisbane and this waterfront history, having been revitalised into an entertainment precinct.
Bowen Terrace c.1910
Bowen Terrace 1927
Charles H Lancaster ‘The Quarry (Bowen Terrace)’ 1930s
Bowen Terrace 1936
Bowen Terrace 1939
Geoffrey Powell ‘Construction of Story Bridge’ 1939
Curatorial extracts, research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
On display in the Queensland Art Gallery’s Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13) Brisbane townscape 1928 (illustrated) by William Bustard (1894-1973) depicts a growing city in a construction boom establishing itself as a state capital. We look over rooftops toward Queen Street from Edward Street, to the City Hall clock tower under construction, and on to Mount Coot-tha in the distance. Bustard employed this high vantage point in many of his deceptions of the city giving him a different perspective on the world.
The scene could have been painted from the three-storey Australian Mutual Provident (AMP) Society building (illustrated), but most likely from the large windows of the six-storey Country Press Chambers building behind (illustrated). Besides the City Hall, the view also captures the Tattersalls Club, its distinctive features in the foreground, past the drapers, Thomas Finney and James Isles Queen Street building, with Ascot Chambers — Brisbane’s first steel-framed skyscraper opened just two years before — framing the view on the right.
The focus of the painting is on the rooftops and the concentration of the multi-storied buildings, but more distinctly the cranes and the skeletal unfinished spire of the City Hall clock tower giving the impression of a city in development. A billowing cloud of smoke in the distance reinforces the sense of activity and drama.
In Brisbane townscape Bustard renders the buildings in simplified blocks of pigment, depicting the light and shadow in broad bands of colour. This simplified decorative style was the face of Modernism in Brisbane at this time.
William Bustard at his first solo exhibition 1931
Bustard was an important figure in the development of art in Queensland from the 1920s to the 1960s, and a founding member of the Queensland National Art Gallery Board of Trustees and Arts Advisory Committee in 1931. A strong advocate for Queensland artists he led by example extolling the need for local artists to capture the unique Queensland light and landscape with Brisbane townscape a fine example of his early style.
William Bustard ‘Brisbane townscape’ 1928
There was intense building activity in Australia’s larger cities like Brisbane during the 1920s and 30s, typified by the construction of buildings such as Brisbane’s City Hall (1920-30), as well as the Grey Street Bridge (1928-32) linking South Brisbane to North Quay, and the Story Bridge (1935-40), linking Kangaroo Point to Petrie Bight, which inspired numerous paintings of the vibrant city.
The building of the City Hall (illustrated) was an even more important focus for civic pride, being the highest structure in Brisbane at the time, and a symbol of the modern city that was completed two years after Bustard made his painting. The Grey Street Bridge (illustrated), which was Brisbane’s second river crossing under construction, may have been the site of one of the cranes and whose operation probably caused the cloud of smoke seen in the distance. The Grey Street Bridge officially opened eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (19 March 1932).
View from the City Hall clock tower 1928
Official opening of City Hall 1930
Official opening of Grey Street Bridge 1932
The buildings depicted in ‘Brisbane townscape’
Australian Mutual Provident (AMP) Society
The original three-storey Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP) building (1885-87) was the company’s Queensland headquarters, situated at 229-239 Queen Street (intersection of Edward Street). The building was demolished by the Society and replaced with a new ten-storey building now known as MacArthur Chambers (1931-34). The building was renamed during the Second World War after General Douglas MacArthur, American Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces for the Pacific Region, who used the building as his headquarters.
Country Press Chambers
The six-storey office block for the Queensland Country Press Co-operative building (1924-25) was situated at 177 Edward Street on the corner of Elizabeth Street. It sits behind the three-storey Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP) building and was built the year before the ten-storey Ascot Chambers (1925-26). The Country Press Chambers was subsequently demolished.
Tattersalls Club
The Brisbane Tattersalls Club was founded in 1883 as a sporting club (its name acquired from Tattersalls of London, the Jockey Club founded in 1766). The Club’s new building (1925-26) in Edward Street was opposite the AMP building and just around the corner from Ascot Chambers in Queen Street. Brisbane sculptor Daphne Mayo was commissioned to design a low relief frieze within the Club’s ground floor arcade of shops connecting to Queen Street. The decorative plaster frieze entitled ‘The Horse in Sport’ depicts equine scenes, and is still viewable today.
Ascot Chambers
Ascot Chambers (1925-26) was Brisbane’s first steel-framed skyscraper and, during its construction attracted attention as Queensland’s tallest building. The building’s owner changed its original name from Vindex House to reflect his passion for horse racing, and with the building coincidentally being sited beside the Brisbane Tattersalls Club. The ten-storey Chambers was situated at 223-227 Queen Street (at the intersection of Edward Street) and was faced in brick with the second and top levels accented with stone-coloured cement facings. The building was demolished in 1995 to make way for the Tattersall’s Club extension.
Finney Isles
The drapers, Thomas Finney and James Isles (established in Fortitude Valley in 1864,) were one of the leading retail firms in Brisbane selling clothing, furniture and household items. Over time, they expanded to their five-storey building (1909-10) situated at 188-198 Queen Street. The department store complex ‘The big block’ was built in stages between 1909 and 1936 linking Queen and Adelaide Streets. Both buildings still stand today.
Supreme Court
The distinctive tower of the Brisbane Supreme Court building (1875-79) can be seen among the less distinguished roof tops featured in Brisbane townscape. The Court was built on a site on George and Adelaide Streets with a frontage to the river on North Quay. It was severely damaged by arson in 1968 and its remains were demolished in 1976 to make way for a new Law Courts Complex.
City Hall
The construction of the Brisbane City Hall was the second most expensive activity in Australia after the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Built between 1920 and 1930, the three-storey building’s clock tower, standing at 87.47 metres houses five bells — four bells weighing over three tonnes that chime every 15 minutes and a 4.3 tonne striking bell that marks the hour. Once the tallest building in Brisbane, its four clock faces on each side of the tower were at the time the largest in Australia at 4.8 metres in diameter. Covering two acres, the Brisbane City Hall remains the largest city hall in Australia.
Brisbane sculptor Daphne Mayo was commissioned to carve the Hall’s tympanum relief The progress of civilisation in the State of Queensland, a sculptured pediment that is a major feature of the building’s entrance.
Daphne Mayo working on the City Hall Tympanum
Curatorial extracts, research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
Although the artist of A view of the new Post Office & School of Arts, Bourbong St. Bundaberg from Barolin St., Augt. 1st 1891, Queensland 1891 (illustrated) is unknown — like the artists of many images of nineteenth century Queensland — the watercolour quite possibly by an architectural draftsman, is significant in showcasing the growing civic pride and wealth of a newly established town.
Bundaberg, midway between Maryborough and Gladstone, is a prosperous sugar-farming and horticultural region established in the 1870s, producing sugar commercially from 1872. Bundaberg owes its survival to the growth of the sugar industry, by the early 1880s with a population of some 1,000, the town was already a major Australian producer, operating two dozen crushing mills, and renowned for its rum distillery since 1888, using molasses, a by-product of sugar. Today Bundaberg is the tenth largest city in the state with a population of over 70,000, some 280 kilometres or a 4 hour drive north from the capital, Brisbane.
‘A view of the new Post Office & School of Arts’ 1891
Bundaberg Post Office 2023
The watercolour is an expression of the material prosperity and cultural success of the regional town as it records the completion of two major buildings. The work focuses on the Bundaberg Post Office (illustrated) — which has remained unchanged since its construction — designed by Brisbane architect Charles McLay (c.1860-1918), at that time the major designer in the Colonial Architect’s Office. The impressive two-story building opened in 1890 and the 30 metre high clock tower which dominates the town was completed in 1891 — the clock which had been ordered from England was installed in 1892. The only noticeable change to the building’s foreground streetscape today is the addition of the Bundaberg War Memorial unveiled in 1921.
To the left is the Bundaberg School of Arts (illustrated) — the oldest public building still standing today — which was completed in 1889 to the design of the partnership Hettrich and Champ (1888- 91).
Bundaberg Post Office 1895
Bundaberg School of Arts 1900
Bourbong Street, looking toward the Post Office 1900
View from the Post Office toward Bundaberg Distillery 1905
Curatorial extracts, research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
Fairy tales transport us to faraway lands that exist out of time. In much-loved and endlessly retold stories overflowing with kings and queens, castles and carriages, feasts and riches, we find adventure, community, happiness and love.
Buy Tickets to ‘Fairy Tales’ Until 28 April 2024 Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Go behind-the-scenes at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) for a sneak peek before the ‘Fairy Tales’ exhibition unfolds across three themed chapters. ‘Into the Woods’ explores the conventions and characters of traditional fairy tales alongside their contemporary retellings. ‘Through the Looking Glass’ presents newer tales of parallel worlds that are filled with unexpected ideas and paths. ‘Ever After’ brings together classic and current tales to celebrate aspirations, challenge convention and forge new directions. Let the journey begin . . .
What is a fairy tale without a gorgeous gown or two or more? Conservators Michael Marendy and Elizabeth Thompson are weaving their magic behind-the-scenes, here they are preparing the support for the wedding dress from MirrorMirror (2012) ready for the grand unveiling of lavish costumes and film props.
Surreal landscapes
Forests and fields are one of the most common fairy tale settings, a magical realm outside of our normal experience. We’re finalising Patricia Piccinini’s otherworldly installation —Celestial Field 2021 — a canopy of nearly 3000 ‘genetically modified’ blooms, forming an inverted garden in the sky sheltering a collection of fragile creatures beneath.
Enchanting forests
Brazilian sculptor Henrique Oliveira is in Brisbane transforming the ‘Fairy Tale’ entrance into a gnarled and twisted woodland. Corupira 2023 incorporates found tree branches, sustainably sourced plywood and strips of tapumes veneer salvaged from construction sites in Brazil. You will definitely be stepping into the woods with this installation.
Wild Things
Many furred creatures inhabit the world of fairy tales, a highlight of the ‘Fairy Tale’ exhibition includes Maurice Sendak’s iconic images from his 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are and costumes by the Jim Henson Creature Shop for the 2009 film adaptation. Here, conservator Michael Marendy is making final adjustments to the display.
Golden coaches
A horse drawn gilded carriage is synonymous with the world of fairy tales — it’s the chosen mode of transport for any princess. For those who love magic, fantasy, and happy endings, this sumptuous stagecoach created from crystalised rock sugar by Timothy Horn is a must-see. Conservator Elizabeth Thompson is checking all is well with the delicate artwork before the opening.
Witches
Witches abound in fairy tales, they commonly live far away from towns and villages, self-sufficient, they rarely choose to live with others, their home often enchanted is filled with magical objects, ancient knowledge and power. Sculptor, painter and filmmaker Trulee Hall is in Brisbane installing the wonderfully theatrical jet-black and precariously constructed Witch House(Umbilical Coven) 2023.
Other worlds
Now installed and on view in the Gallery’s foyer are 15 works from contemporary American and Spanish artists Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s ongoing ‘Travelers’ series of snow globes, each contains a unique but disorienting tale devised by the artists. These mesmerising snow globes will captivate you.
The ‘Fairy Tales’ exhibition is at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Australia from 2 December 2023 until 28 April 2024.
‘Fairy Tales Cinema: Truth, Power and Enchantment‘ presented in conjunction with GOMA’s blockbuster summer exhibition screens at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA from 2 December 2023 until 28 April 2024.
The major publication ‘Fairy Tales in Art and Film’ available at the QAGOMA Store and online explores how fairy tales have held our fascination for centuries through art and culture.
From gift ideas, treats just for you or the exhibition publication, visit the ‘Fairy Tales’ exhibition shop at GOMA or online.
Elliott Murray is Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
The horse has been a integral part of human history for millennia, prized both for their agility, speed and endurance, or strength needed to pull a plow or a carriage full of people. However improved transportation options towards the end of the 1800s, especially the construction of railways, and the development of new mechanical innovations from the early twentieth century including the first mass-affordable automobile, ultimately superseded the four legged version of horsepower and ousting our daily reliance on the horse.
Stan Berriman ‘A man and a boy ploughing a field’ 1938
Even so, the horse is still part of our daily conversation today with a myriad of horse-related expressions that have been handed down to us over the ages ranging from ‘Get off your high horse’, to ‘Eat like a horse’ just to name a couple; and when Australia stops for one of the most famous races in the world on the first Tuesday of November, we are also reminded of popular horse racing terminology that has also made its way into our everyday language with ‘Jockeying into position’ and ‘Starting from scratch’; and who isn’t tempted to hang a horseshoe over the door for good luck?
Since we’ve gone all horsey, let’s take a look at some of the works in the QAGOMA Collection that feature the horse… they transport us around in carriages, we ride them, race them, study them, document their lives, they are a status and power symbol, our ally in war, we cherish them as close companions, and most importantly, they inspire us to create.
So, next time you visit us, see how many horses you can find, also check out our round-up of cats and dogs in the Collection.
Fairy Tales
If your love of the horse extends to the enchanting world of fairy tales — nothing goes together better than a horse and carriage — there will be a couple of coaches on view in our summer blockbuster, one encrusted in golden crystallised rock sugar (illustrated), and Cinderella’s pumpkin coach on the big screen at the Australian Cinémathèque. Exclusive to Brisbane, the ticketed ‘Fairy Tales‘ exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane (2 December 2023 until 28 April 2024) and the accompanying free film program ‘Fairy Tales Cinema: Truth, Power and Enchantment’ surveys how fairy tales from across the world have held our fascination for centuries through art and culture.
Timothy Horn‘Mother-load’ on display in ‘Fairy Tales’ at GOMA
Cinderella screens in the Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA
Albrecht Dürer ‘The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse’ 1497–98
Tosa Mitsuatsu ‘Pair of six fold screens’ 18th century
Utagawa Hiroshige III ‘View of trading companies at Yokohama‘ 1871
‘Netsuke: (two horses)‘ 19th century
George Jones ‘Black horse’
ST Gill ‘Overlanders’ 1865
William Strutt ‘Study of a horse’s head‘ 1884
Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe ‘Breakfast, Alpha’ 1884
‘Racing trophy: The Wythes and Hodgson Cup’ c.1870-73
Eadweard Muybridge ‘Dan’ galloping, saddled’ 1887
Hans Heysen ‘The grass stack‘ 1906
George W Lambert ‘Bushranger‘
George W. Lambert ‘Walk (An incident at Romani)’ 1919-22
The Brisbane River and Moreton Bay have continually shaped south-east Queensland’s history. From the time of the First Australians for the Turrbal and Jagarra people, the river, known as Maiwar, has been a meeting place, a highway and a source of food. A critical conduit for early settlement and subsequent industry and development, the winding river and bay of islands have inspired artists for generations.
200 years ago when the explorer John Oxley visited Moreton Bay in 1823, he named the river Brisbane in honour of the then Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane (1773-1860). Later, in 1825, a settlement on its banks to house Sydney’s most unruly convicts was called Brisbane.
Early depictions of Brisbane and the river that runs through it that gave the town its name are rare, nevertheless the Gallery’s collection of watercolours and sketches by both Conrad Martens — the only major colonial artist to work in Queensland — and Silvester Diggles who recorded views of early European settlement, give us a glimpse of Brisbane prior to it being proclaimed a municipality in 1859 and becoming the capital of newly independent Queensland that same year.
John Oxley’s plan of the river Brisbane and chart of Moreton Bay 1823
Plan of Brisbane Town 1839
Still standing today in Brisbane’s Central Business District are two buildings referenced in the Town Plan of 1839. The Commissariat Store in William Street was used for distributing food, clothing, tools and other requirements (No. 9) (illustrated) and built in 1828-29, and the Windmill in Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill (No. 36) (illustrated) also built in the late 1820s to grind sufficient grain to sustain the settlement, however by 1855 was converted to a signal station now known as The Observatory.
Also listed, the Government Gardens at Gardens Point was established in 1828 for planting crops and provided food for the town before a botanic curator was appointed when the gardens officially opened in 1855 as Brisbane’s Botanical Gardens.
London born Conrad Martens (1801–78) based in Sydney from 1835 was the most proficient and prolific landscape artist in the Australian colonies. In 1851 the economic depression in Sydney prompted Martens to make a sketching tour of areas of northern New South Wales that now fall within Queensland. Martens arrived in Moreton Bay in November 1851 and by March 1852 the artist had completed over ninety drawings, valuable records of Queensland. Returning to Sydney he completed around seventy commissions working from his field sketches, these watercolours combined with the sketches are a unique record of Brisbane and its river.
The panoramic view North and South Brisbane from the South Brisbane rocks 1851 (illustrated) is perhaps Conrad Martens’s most important historical document of Brisbane and is taken from the top of the cliffs at Kangaroo Point opposite the Botanic Gardens. It includes South Brisbane to the left clustered around Stanley and Russell Streets, the wharves where ships from Sydney berthed, animals grazing on the Gardens site in the foreground, and the Convict Barracks in Queen Street (No. 33 in the Brisbane Town Map of 1839).
Conrad Martens ‘North and South Brisbane from the South Brisbane rocks’ 1851
Detail of South Brisbane
Detail of Convict Barracks, North Brisbane
Convict Barracks
In 1862 Martens sent the painting View of Brisbane (in 1851) (illustrated) to Charles Darwin, his shipmate on HMS Beagle in the early 1830s, to mark the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Martens may have chosen this subject because their mutual friend and shipmate on the Beagle, Captain JC Wickham, was Police Magistrate in Brisbane at the time of Martens’ visit.
Conrad Martens ‘View of Brisbane (in 1851)’ 1862
The view of North Brisbane from Kangaroo Point (illustrated) is from the ferry stop at Kangaroo Point that looks across to the original Customs House, built 1849–50 (illustrated). The new Customs House was completed on the same site in 1889.
Conrad Martens ‘North Brisbane from Kangaroo Point’ 1852
First Brisbane Customs House
Conrad Martens ‘Kangaroo Point, Brisbane’ 1852
Conrad Martens ‘Brisbane’ 1855
Brisbane
European settlement of Brisbane was developed around present-day William and Queen Streets. The first buildings were temporary, constructed of slabs, and were subsequently replaced by larger structures of brick and stone. When the town was surveyed to prepare for free settlement in 1842, the largest structure, the convict-built Prisoner’s Barracks, determined the position of Queen Street and the layout of the future city.
Settlement initially spread in areas closest to the former penal station site and the river at North Brisbane, South Brisbane and Kangaroo Point, all linked by ferries. With shipping as the main means of access and communication for Brisbane and the settlements inland, Brisbane gradually developed as a port.
Views of Brisbane 1860s
Plan of the city of Brisbane 1865
Pictorial maps of Brisbane 1880s
Silvester Diggles
Silvester Diggles (1817–80), painter, professional photographer, musician and naturalist, moved to Brisbane from Sydney in 1854, after emigrating from England in 1853. He taught art and music and was drawing master at the Brisbane Grammar School in 1869–70 and at All Hallows School in 1870. Diggles took an active part in the cultural life of Brisbane, helping to establish its musical societies, its first scientific society (the Queensland Philosophical Society) and the Queensland Museum.
Silvester Diggles ‘View from Kangaroo Point’ 1858
Silvester Diggles ‘Fortitude Valley’ 1858
Silvester Diggles ‘Kangaroo Point’ 1858
Silvester Diggles ‘North Brisbane from the south side’ 1858
Buildings
Early European buildings were small and inexpensive, on small allotments, built of readily available materials in a simple, easily constructed style — bark huts could be built in a day. More comfortable was the slab and shingle structure, cheaply erected of local timber, and later the sawn timber buildings. Generally, modest houses were built in lower lying areas, with more substantial structures on higher ground.
Later buildings reflected — in size, style, ornamentation, materials and position — the extent of their owners success and their faith in the future of the new northern settlement. Generally there was some adaptation to the local climate. Larger and more ornate homes set in spacious grounds and in the best locations began to appear. These included ‘Bulimba’ (1849–50) and ‘Newstead’ (1845–46), both stone riverfront residences with large and impressive grounds.
‘Bulimba House’ (illustrated) was the grand Brisbane residence of David Cannon McConnel, the first squatter to settle east of the Great Dividing Range, at Cressbrook. ‘Bulimba House’ still stands on the opposite bank of the Brisbane River to Newstead House (illustrated), built by Patrick Leslie in 1846.
Bulimba House
Newstead House
Curatorial extracts, research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
Acknowledgment of Country The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution Indigenous people make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs on the QAGOMA Blog are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.
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We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.