Go back in time when Brisbane was a busy shipping port

Two paintings by Isaac Walter Jenner (1836-1902) Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm 1888 (illustrated) and View of Brisbane 1885 (illustrated) are currently on display. Such paintings at the time of their execution supplied the population of Brisbane with artistic impressions of their new home, and in some ways validating it — art as a…

Queensland’s National Art Gallery: The opening Collection

On 18 September 1894 local artist and president of the Queensland Art Society, R Godfrey Rivers, sent to the Queensland Government a full proposal for a State Art Gallery, Rivers noted that the Government was already in possession of a number of fine engravings. He suggested in his proposal that about fifty be mounted and…

Australian art, Fiona Foley, Australia b.1964, Badtjala woman 1994

We use art to question what we know

Telling the Story of Australian Art in new and innovative ways Swedish-born artist Oscar Friström’s Duramboi 1893 depicts James Davis, a young convict sent from Scotland to Australia. Davis escaped from a Moreton Bay penal colony in 1829 and lived with several Indigenous groups in the area, particularly on Fraser Island (where he was known as…

Auschar Chauncy, England/Australia b.c.1836-1877 / Portrait of Richard Edwards 1874

We all call Queensland home

By telling the story of Australian Art, we can observe the changing nature of portraiture — the shift from democratic modes such as the nineteenth-century photograph, to oil paintings produced after a number of sittings and preparatory sketches. These portraits tell stories of contact between cultures, including colonial and immigrant experiences. Many of these stories connect…