Knud Bull was born in Norway. He trained as an artist and painted in Norway, Dresden, Copenhagen and Stockholm before moving to London in 1845, where he was arrested for counterfeiting and sentenced to 14 years transportation in Australia. Arriving at Norfolk Island, after nine months he was transferred t...
The earliest known free-standing, full-length sculpture created in Australia is a highly detailed sandstone statue of a well-dressed
colonial gentleman, urinating. Functionally plumbed, this statue is as extraordinary as it is enigmatic. Chris Tassell speculates on
who might have...
Visions of a Republic. The work of Lucien Henry, the lavishly illustrated 2001 book produced for an exhibition on the designs and art of Lucien Henry (1850–1896), devotes more words to describing a photograph of the couple’s apartment in Darlinghurst (plate 1) than it does to describing his wife Juliette. Y...
We often recognise Australiana by the presence of motifs depicting Australia’s unique flora and fauna and, especially in the 19th century, representations of Indigenous figures. Anthropologists studied Indigenous people, while the things they made – much of it, what we would describe today as art – were r...
Mostly out of self-interest, we love to help people enhance their research skills, and thus advance knowledge of Australiana. Almost everyone will recognise themselves in this story. Art historian Stephen Scheding had lots of information on artists but needed to organise it, so he created an archive. Then he ma...
Previously thought lost, this iconic Australian image – a large double-sided painted timber carving of a buck jumper made in 1893/4 by renowned Queensland sculptor Harold Parker – was made as an advertising sign for the Brisbane saddlery of R.E. Jarman. After it re-emerged in 2011 at a Sydney auction, Adam ...
David Scott Mitchell (1836 –1907) had a private income which allowed him to pursue his collecting and become the greatest Australiana collector. About a century after British settlement, Mitchell identified the need to collect Australiana that was, at the time, rapidly disappearing. His collection of somewher...
In the 19th century, many artists trained in Europe came to Australia, where the strange new land often impacted on how they saw the world and what they depicted. French china painter Madame Bourdic did not succumb to the Australian environment. She continued to paint china in the academic tradition she had lea...
Edinburgh-born John Carmichael arrived in Sydney in 1825, living and working there for over 30 years producing landscapes, portraits, maps, billheads, musical scores, illustrations and some of Australia’s first postage stamps. His works provide a revealing and valuable record of life and times in colonial Syd...
David Kelly sets out in this book to chart the history of 100 or so master cabinet-makers working in New South Wales up to 1850. His introduction discusses that bland sentence in some detail, meticulously defining those terms and the parameters of his research. Then Kelly outlines the structure of the book, sou...
The first update to my book Convict and Free: the Master Furniture-makers of NSW 1788–1851 will be available on CD in December, with at least two new chapters, on Thomas Mercer Booth and John McMahon. However, Australiana members may be interested to learn now that a reader from Ireland has provided me with d...
In his new book Convict and Free: The Master Furniture-makers of Early New South Wales, David Kelly presents well-researched biographies of dozens of previously little-known cabinetmakers. Tasmanian and NSW cabinet-maker, undertaker and upholsterer Joseph Baronet Bridekirk is just one of them. His story is docu...