Go back in time to 1928 when Brisbane was a growing city

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…

Bringing Isaac Walter Jenner’s paintings back to life

Two oil paintings by Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902) from 1897 and gifted to the Gallery in 2020 both needed significant interventive structural and cosmetic conservation treatment before going on display this year for the first time. Ruby Awburn, then Assistant Conservator (Paintings) at QAGOMA, describes the months of careful work required to restore these important…

Step back to an earlier time when Brisbane was named after a river

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…

Go back in time when artists travelled to Lone Pine for inspiration

We look back to when Brisbane’s Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary was established in 1927 by the Reid family as a safe refuge for sick, injured, and orphaned koalas, it was the first such sanctuary of its kind, beginning with just two called Jack and Jill, since then it has grown from these original koalas to…

Isaac Walter Jenner: A force in Brisbane’s cultural life

The exhibition ‘A Feeling for Light’ at the Queensland Art Gallery from 2 September 2023 until 28 January 2024, explores the evocative paintings of Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902), a self-taught marine and landscape painter. Following his arrival in Brisbane in 1883 (illustrated), Jenner spent the last two decades of his life as a major force…

Go back in time to 1885 when Brisbane was a young township

Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe’s watercolour Houses of Parliament, Brisbane 1885 (illustrated and currently on display at the Queensland Art Gallery) was painted just before the artist left Australia to return to England. We can clearly see Queensland’s Parliament House and other recognisable Brisbane landmarks from across the river in a depiction of the daily life of…