Artists in early Australia were usually trained in Britain and Europe in the Classical tradition going back to ancient Greece and Rome. David Hansen explores the possibility that, in the composition of his paintings created in Van Diemen’s Land, Benjamin Duterrau was influenced by Renaissance and Classical models he had seen in London.
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, workshop and guild traditions were based on the principle of emulation, with apprentices learning by copying the works of their masters. In painting, the practice was gradually regularised and systematised in the curricula of emergent national academies of art, beginning at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and in Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s program at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris.
The State Library of New South Wales recently purchased a rare original ornithological watercolour by Elizabeth Gould (1804–1841), formerly in the collection of the late James Fairfax AC. This adds to the collection of manuscript letters and other original materials the Library has acquired relating to this important illustrator, one closely linked to Australia through her work with her husband John, as well as through her family. David Hansen tells the story of the artist and the work.
