Arthur Boyd was one of Australia’s most prolific and original artists. In a career that spanned six decades, Boyd compiled an impressive legacy of paintings, drawings and prints. While most of the works sprang from literary texts or directly from his fertile imagination, many others were a d

Sidney Nolan told the writer Colin MacInnes in 1961 that the main ingredients of his iconic 1946-47 ‘Ned Kelly’ series were ‘Kelly’s own words, and Rousseau, and sunlight.’¹ It is an elegant summation and points to Nolan’s fascination in the Kelly legend which did not diminish fro

The story goes that when Fred Williams returned to Australia in 1956 after a five year period living and working in London, fellow artist John Brack (1920-1999) said to him ‘Well Freddy, what are you going to do?’ - to which he replied, ‘I’m going to paint the gum tree.’¹ Despite

Potter and wife on Beach at Arthurs Seat c.1968-69, celebrates Arthur Boyd’s rich and evocative family history that informs his artistic output and philosophy along with the significance of place of Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay and Mornington Peninsula.

Arthur and

Tom Roberts was central to the birth of Australian Impressionism in August 1889 at Buxton’s, a small art gallery in Melbourne, and 128 years later he continues to remain central in the entire nation’s evolved sense of selfhood.

In many ways the English-born Roberts was blessed with

In Rupert Bunny’s paintings there are no gum trees, no sheep, no pioneers and no nationalistic drum-beating. On the contrary, Bunny’s paintings betray a ‘feminine’ world of repose, relaxed comfort, beauty and unhurried ease. These qualities were recognised in his first exhibition in Sydney u

Sir Arthur Streeton’s South Head, Sydney (also known as Sydney Heads)1912-13 with its breezily deft brushwork and letterbox slot view, shows the hallmark attributes that made the artist so justly famous.

Furthermore, the painting’s provenance is impeccabl

Late nineteenth-century Australian painting delights in story telling. Even the Impressionists Tom Roberts (1856-1931), Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917) and Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) painted pictures about bushrangers, the toils of the pioneers, and days and nights of dalliance. With an incl

Rural labour with a nationalist ethos has been a dominant theme in Australian art and literature from the mid-nineteenth century on. The art of Frederick McCubbin was at the forefront of these investigations; his fascination with epic narrative paintings of white settlement in Australia prod

Jeffery Smart is an artist who is acutely aware of the visual curiosities and quirky juxtapositions that urban life presents.  His is an avid traveller, but never a tourist. His eye searches for insights that might propel his artistic imagination.  In his paintings the taken for gr