Why Did Colonial Art Make Australia Look So English?

Sue Rabbitt Roff Article published in Agora 59:1 (2024), 63-67

ACTIVITIES

As early as Level 3 and 4 the Victorian Curriculum suggests ‘examining paintings and accounts (by observers such as Watkin Tench and David Collins) to determine the impact of early British colonisation on Aboriginal peoples’ country’ (p38).  At Levels 5 and 6 students should be ‘investigating the impact of settlement on the environment, for example, comparing the present and past landscape and the flora and fauna of the local community.’ (p42)  Levels 7 and 8 students learn to examine and compare  ‘their accuracy, usefulness and reliability’ (p73) as they ‘analyse the different perspectives of peoples in the past using sources’ (p73). At Levels 9 and 10 they  become competent in using ICT to help ‘identify literal and symbolic features of sources and explain their purpose and inferences’ (p74) and ’evaluate different historical interpretations and contested debates’ (p 84).

Here are some suggestions for how these goals can be achieved, with materials and exercises that can be adapted up and down the Curriculum levels.

• ACTIVITY 1: The Case of the Loin Cloths aka Lap Laps
• ACTIVITY 2: Video discussions of Lycett’s depiction of Aboriginals
• ACTIVITY 3: Learning to Paint Kangaroos
• ACTIVITY 4: Are the Hunterian Museum Kangaroos Painted in Oils?
• ACTIVITY 5: Where were the Hunterian Museum Kangaroos Painted?

LINKS TO FOOTNOTES in Why Did Colonial Art Make Australia Look So English? Agora… 2024

Janelle Evans Painting the unfamiliar: why the first European paintings of Australian animals
so alien to our eyes. The Conversation August 21, 2023
https://theconversation.com/painting-the-unfamiliar-why-the-first-european-paintings-
of-australian-animals-look-so-alien-to-our-eyes-202719

Sue Rabbitt Roff, The Curious Case of the Memetic Marsupial. The Rabbitt Review, January 2021 https://www.rabbittreview.com/the-curious-case-of-the-memetic-marsupial

Sue Rabbitt Roff. Whose Kangaroo Was It Anyway? Pearls & Irritations, December 27, 2020 https://johnmenadue.com/whose-kangaroo-was-it-anyway/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/picturesque

https://www.rct.uk/collection/1077313/observations-on-the-river-wye-and-several-parts-of-south-wales-c-relative-chiefly

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/art-nature-imaging/collections/first-fleet/art-
collection/search.dsml?

lastDisp=gall&searchTer =Port+Jackson+Painter&stype=ftext&notes=true&b
eginIndex=149&

The UK Natural History Museum collection of First Fleet art will be online again in November 2023 https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/services/library/collections/fleet-artwork.html

https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/86320

https://archive.org/details/europeanvisionso0000smit_h7x1/page/178/mode/2up?q=barron

https://www.rct.uk/collection/1151382/an-essay-on-the-picturesque-as-compared-with-the-sublime-and-the-beautiful-and-
on#:~:text=Its%20author%2C%20Uvedale%20Price%20believed,contained%20aspects%20of%20the
%20two.

https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/john-lewin-1770

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/people/who-was-lancelot-capability-brown
https://www.google.com/search?

q=aboriginal+perspective+joseph+lycett&tbm=isch&rlz=1CAZKSY_e
nGB952GB952&hl=en-
GB&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit6aib85L1AhUa8IUKHYOuCOEQrNwCKAB6BQgBEIgC&biw=1280&bih=561#imgrc=nJ3rYdKIYGDEFM
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1609358

available online at https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1304421h.html

https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/569912/view/aboriginal-tree-climbing-18th-
century – Port Jackson Painter

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Climbing-trees-by-John-Heaviside-Clark-del-M-
Dubourg-sculpt-1813-Field-Sports –

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138498775/view

https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/collection-publications/collection/works/fish-catch-and-dawes-point-sydney-harbour/23928/

https://www.thehistoryofart.org/thomas-gainsborough/mr-and-mrs-andrews/

https://archive.org/details/historicalrecor01walegoog/page/754/mode/2uphttp://www.artuk.org/artworks/kangaroos-145977http://www.artuk.org/artworks/kangaroos-145978

https://archive.org/details/historicalrecor01walegoog/page/754/mode/2