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National Gallery Art School opened in 1867 on Swanston Street  (today's State Library of Victoria). Some of Australia’s most well-known artists attended the school, ranging from Hugh Ramsay to Margaret Preston and Joy Hester. Up until around 1910, it was considered to offer the best art training in Australia. Its heads of school and teachers of painting included Eugene von Gerard, George Frederick Folingsby, Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall.

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Captain Arthur Phillip led the First Fleet which established the first colony in 1788.

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Soda_Jerk, Terror Nullius, 2018, 55-minutes

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“Central to the traditional law was the notion of territory unoccupied and unacquired—terra nullius... Such territory could be acquired merely by an occupation sufficiently effective, accompanied by an intention to acquire sovereignty. On the other hand where territory was already occupied or acquired, cession, conquest (and possibly prescription) were the appropriate modes. But the category terra nullius was not self-defining nor did practice bear out the positivist assumption that territory was either terra nullius or part of an existing State. The category terra nullius was a residual one. Thus it is first necessary to determine in what cases territory was regarded as occupied whether by indigenous States or other entities with a degree of political organization...”

Excerpt From: James R. Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law, p. 760.

"Before Cook set off on the first Journey, the British Admiralty
gave him secret instructions. These were both written and verbal. He was not allowed to read the written instructions until he had reached Tahiti and finished observing an important planetary event, the transit of Venus... The instructions then said, ‘You are also with
the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of
Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of
the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country
uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by setting
up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers
and possessors.’ Cook was clearly unable to gain ‘the consent of the natives’ in his visits to the east coast of Australia.
Quite the opposite: he was unable to establish any
kind of understanding or engagement with the
Neunonne or Gweagal peoples. This is because Cook’s
behaviour – entering Country without consent – was
not appropriate."

Excerpt from: Clare Land, Paula Bala and Kate Golding, Blak Cook Book, p. 18.

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Benjamin Duterrau, Mr Robinson’s first interview with Timmy. 1840, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1979

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The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania's Black War, National Gallery of Australia, 12 May – 29 July 2018

The National Picture will shine a light on two enthralling yet under-examined figures in Australian history: colonial artist Benjamin Duterrau and the ‘Conciliator’ George Augustus Robinson. Drawing key loans from national and international collections, including five of the seven known ‘proclamation boards’, The National Picture will examine the work of colonial artists from the declaration of martial law in Van Diemen’s Land in 1828 and the beginnings of George Augustus Robinson’s ill-fated ‘Friendly Mission’ through to Duterrau’s death in 1851.

The exhibition will also include a group of works dating from the 1920s to the present day that reference and respond to the many confronting issues that continue to arise from Tasmania’s complex past

https://nga.gov.au/nationalpicture/

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James Belich, Review of Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939

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The term ‘history painting’ was introduced by the French Royal Academy in the seventeenth century. It was seen as the most important type (or ‘genre’), of painting above portraiture, the depiction of scenes from daily life (called genre painting), landscape and still life painting.

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John Glover, The Temple of Sibyl at Tivoli, not signed, not dated, watercolour, 52.5 x 77.5 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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An allegory is the description of a subject in the guise of another subject. An allegorical painting might include figures emblematic of different emotional states of mind – for example envy or love – or personifying other abstract concepts, such as sight, glory, beauty...

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Patrick Wolfe, 'Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native', Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4, (2006): pp. 387-409, DOI: 10.1080/14623520601056240.

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Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native

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Eugene von Guérard, Weatherboard Creek Falls, Jamieson's Valley, New South Wales, 1862, oil on canvas, 122.1 × 183.3 cm, National Gallery of Victoria. 

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‘Staffage’ refers to the human and animal figures that populate pictures, either with subtle anonymity or with symbolic, historical, biblical significance.

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A cultural movement across the arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that departed from classical or inherited ideas about art and strove to replace them with new aesthetics that expressed the contemporary.

Robin Walz, Modernism (Harlow: Pearson, 2013), xxv.

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The anti-modernists in Australian art saw modern art as "corrupt" and connected modernist art with eugenics. Many anti-Modernists including Lionel Lindsay and members of the Jindyworobak Movement held racist beliefs.

See: Lionel Lindsay, Addled Art. London: Hollis and Carter, 1946.

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Rayner Hoff, Crucifixion of Civilisation, 1914

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https://www.anzacmemorial.nsw.gov.au/our-stories/sculpture-hoff

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Crucifixion of Civilisation 1914 courtesy Sculpture of Rayner Hoff, Sunnybrook press 1934

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The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

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The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

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Exhibition of French and British contemporary art / [exhibition held Town Hall, Melbourne, opened October 16th, 1939] ; organizer of exhibition, Basil Burdett ; [exhibition brought to Melbourne by the Herald]

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Began in 1934 as the home of John and Sunday Reed
Became the home to a circle of artists and a private library

https://www.heide.com.au/about/heide-story

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Heide Museum of Modern Art began life in 1934 as the home of John and Sunday Reed and has since evolved into one of Australia's most important cultural institutions.
Soon after purchasing the fifteen acre property on which Heide stands in 1934, founders John and Sunday Reed opened their home to like-minded individuals such as artists Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff. They nurtured a circle of artists, writers and intellectuals who contributed to Heide becoming a place for the discussion, creation and promotion of modern art and literature.

John and Sunday made a lasting contribution to Australian culture through their support of creative endeavours in the visual arts, literature and architecture. In the mid-1950s the Reeds established the Gallery of Contemporary Art and in 1958, with the assistance of friend and entrepreneur Georges Mora, they re-launched the gallery as the Museum of Modern Art of Australia. This eventually led to the formal establishment of the museum.

Amassing an outstanding collection of the contemporary art of their time, the Reeds outgrew their original farmhouse, now known as Heide I, and in 1964 commissioned the construction of a 'gallery to be lived in' from David McGlashan. This modernist architectural icon eventually opened as a public art museum in November 1981 following its purchase by the State Government on behalf of the people of Victoria. Although the Reeds lived to see their vision fulfilled of Heide as a public museum, they both died shortly afterwards in December 1981, ten days apart. They are remembered as champions of modern art and literature and remain two of Australia's most important art benefactors.

Art

Having presented over 300 solo, group and thematic exhibitions of modern and contemporary art since becoming a public art museum in 1981, Heide has a gained a national reputation for artistic excellence and established a unique position in the overall artistic and cultural history of Australia.
The work of modernist artists of the 'Heide circle' has featured in the exhibition program since the inaugural exhibition Ned Kelly Paintings by Sidney Nolan in 1981, and continued with exhibitions of works by Sam Atyeo, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Joy Hester, Mirka Mora and Albert Tucker.
The Reeds' legacy is honoured through a variety of changing exhibitions that draw on the museum's modernist history and its founders' philosophy of supporting innovative contemporary art. Solo contemporary artist exhibitions have included Susan Norrie, Rick Amor, Kathy Temin, Fiona Hall, Stephen Benwell and Emily Floyd.
Since 1996, Heide has also shown a series of small project exhibitions by emerging artists including Dylan Martorell, Charlie Sofo, Louise Saxton, Paul Yore, and Siri Hayes.
Ground-breaking historical surveys have included Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia (2009), Cubism & Australian Art (2009-10), Less is More: Minimalism and Post Minimalism in Australia (2012) and most recently Call of the Avant-Garde: Constructivism and Australian Art (2017).

Architecture

The architecture of Heide Museum of Modern Art is a stunning reflection of the site's transformation from a rural homestead to the public art museum it is today.
The first residence of John and Sunday Reed at Heide was a distinctive weatherboard farmhouse which they renovated in the French provincial style. Known as Heide I, this beautiful cottage was home to the Reeds for thirty-five years and is the place where Sidney Nolan's Kelly series was painted; where the Angry Penguins Ern Malley poems were argued as being authentic or spurious; where Albert Tucker and Joy Hester lived for a time, and where many creatives enjoyed delicious afternoon teas.
Amassing an outstanding collection of contemporary art, the Reeds outgrew Heide I, and in 1963 commissioned David McGlashan, of McGlashan & Everist to plan and construct a new home in the modernist style. Their brief was that the building should be romantic, have a sense of mystery and weather over time to take on the appearance of a ruin in the landscape. They also desired a 'gallery to be lived in', intending that this building should one day be transformed into a public art gallery.
Since the establishment of Heide as a public museum and garden in 1981, the site has expanded to include the Sidney Myer Education Centre, an elegant glass pavilion café and Heide III, a purpose built museum space, whose black titanium zinc facade strikingly contrasts with the white limestone of Heide II, while echoing the earlier building's modernist spirit.

Gardens

Open to the public all year round, the beautiful gardens at Heide offer a space for family enjoyment and individual reflection and incorporate a sculpture park and several of the original gardens, which are now heritage listed.
When Sunday and John Reed purchased Heide it was a neglected former dairy farm. After fifty years of vision, dedication and sheer hard work, the Reeds moulded Heide into a personal Eden, connecting art with nature and creating a nourishing environment for the artists they championed - Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Charles Blackman and Mirka Mora among them.
Today, visitors can discover Sunday Reed's walled garden, original kitchen garden and the wild garden near Heide I, and the famous Heide II kitchen garden in which Sunday worked daily until just before her death in 1981. Artist gardens have also been established within the Heide landscape by artists such as Lauren Berkowitz and Fiona Hall.

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Heide Museum of Modern Art began life in 1934 as the home of John and Sunday Reed and has since evolved into one of Australia's most important cultural institutions. Soon after purchasing the fifteen acre property on which Heide stands in 1934, founders John and Sunday Reed opened their home to like-minded individuals such as artists Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff.

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In 1932 Arnold Shore and George Bell opened the Bell-Shore school of painting, then the only Melbourne school purporting to teach modernist principles.

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Catalogue to inaugural exhibition, 1939. 

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Formed in Victoria 1938
Key figures that were associated with the CAS: Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, Harry de Hartog, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan
Their Aim: To protest at the perceived conservatism of the dominant Australian Academy of Art, with primary and paramount objective being the fostering and promotion of contemporary art, to further the understanding of it, and to encourage and stimulate artists.

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Albert Tucker, The Futile City, 1940, oil on cardboard, 45 x 54.5 cm, Heide Museum of Modern Art

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During the late 1930s, Albert Tucker became intrigued with Surrealist techniques such as automatism (the relaxation of conscious thought to release unconscious ideas and feelings for artistic expression). Surrealism gave Tucker a way into an exploration of the inner self and his feelings about life during wartime.

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Russell Drysdale, Aboriginal stockmen, circa 1953, oil on canvas, 76.5 x 60.9 cm stretcher; 87.8 x 72.5 cm frame, National Gallery of NSW.

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— Depicts reality in a way that moves away from the romanticised ideas of Australia demonstrated in artwork produced in previous years

— Focuses on social relations and conditions of different classes of people in Australian society

— A critique on social structures

— Raw and austere representation of trauma

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The French term plein air means out of doors and refers to the practice of painting entire finished pictures out of doors.

"In the summer of 1886–87, McCubbin, Roberts and
Abrahams rented a cottage at Mentone, a beachside
suburb of Melbourne. Here and at nearby Beaumaris
they again painted en plein air. They met the younger,
less experienced artist Arthur Streeton sketching
on the beach at Ricketts Point and he subsequently
joined them in their painting expeditions,
later recalling:

The first open-air picture I had seen of McCubbin’s
was painted on these shores. A full expanse of pale
blue lapping water, and the beach and fossil rocks for a
foreground, and shed over the surface of everything was
the warm air of December noon."

https://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/MCCUBBIN/pdf/MCCUBBIN_ESSAY.pdf

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Tom Roberts, Slumbering sea, Mentone, 1887, oil on canvas, 51.3 × 76.5 cm, NGV

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She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism, 2 Apr 21 – 22 Aug 21, National Gallery of Victoria

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She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism, 2 Apr 21 – 22 Aug 21, National Gallery of Victoria

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She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism is a large-scale exhibition of more than 250 artworks drawn from major public and private collections around Australia, including the NGV Collection. Featuring some of the most widely recognisable and celebrated works by Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Jane Sutherland, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Clara Southern, John Russell and E. Phillips Fox, the exhibition also brings to light lesser-known paintings by Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory. She-Oak and Sunlight presents these works in new and surprising contexts, exploring the impact of personal relationships, international influences and the importance of place on the trajectory of the movement.

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Roberts, Conder and Streeton decided to hold an exhibition of their work and named it the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition. The majority of the works were painted on nine-by-five-inch wooden boards (many of which were cigar box lids). It was the first major exhibition of Impressionist paintings in Australia.

The exhibition took place at Buxton Galleries on Swanston Street. It was a larger space located in Melbourne’s most popular gallery and artistic supply store.

Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder, Manifesto, June 1889:

Any effect of nature which moves us strongly by its beauty, whether strong or vague in its drawing, defined or indefinite in its light, rare or ordinary in colour, is worthy of our best efforts and of the love of those who love our art. Through and over all this we say we will do our best to put only the truth down, and only as much as we feel sure of seeing.

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Nikos Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012): 81.

The term ‘cosmopolitanism’ is both the product of an idea of the world and an ideal form of global citizenship. Everyone who is committed to it recalls the phrase first used by Socrates and then adopted as a motif by the Cynics and the Stoics: ‘I am a citizen of the world’. Indeed the etymology of the word and its theory appear to be in wondrous symmetry. There are no records that demonstrate the existence of a cosmopolitan society and yet, throughout history, the concept of cosmopolitanism has continually surfaced as a term to express the basic idea of human unity and a harmonious form of universal governance.

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Hilda Rix Nicholas, Morocco, market-place with pile of oranges, c. 1912, 27.3 x 35.1, oil on canvas, NGV

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(Penguin History) Edward W. Said - Orientalism-Penguin Books (1979)

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https://www.afr.com/politics/albert-tucker-the-first-of-the-living-greats-revisited-19900823-k40vr

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He was born in Melbourne in 1914, a child of the Depression who left school at 14, relying on frequent visits to the public library in Melbourne for his education. Though he had no formal art training, at 17 he discovered the Victorian Artists' Society, where he attended drawing classes after work three nights a week for seven years.

The significant turning point in Tucker's career as an artist came in the late 1930s, when he met painters such as Bergner, Vassilieff, Lawlor, Boyd and Nolan, and became a member of the radical movement the Angry Penguins.

The social and artistic concerns of the movement, like those of T.S.Eliot's, in whose work Tucker "instantly recognised a twin soul"expressing "horror, outrage, despair, (and) futility" at the human condition, were seminal influences in his later explorations of the complexities of human psychology.

The abrasive confrontality of Tucker's work, more often than not brutal images of the human condition, can hardly be regarded as objects of beauty, but rather forceful statements of abhorrence at man's inhumanity.

His concerns nonetheless are universal, ranging from urban alienation and loneliness, to prostitution, myths and their relationship to landscape and the devastation of war. And his vision, if pessimistic, is at least not without substance and poignancy.

For in Tucker's famous series Image of Modern Evil, a savage attack on female sexuality, where the metamorphosis from female form to an almost headless fleshy starfish takes place, there is a very dry sense of humour underlying the work. This cutting humour is also carried through to his unforgettably powerful and emaciated antipodean heads.

In the latter, the ever-present crescent, his deprecating symbol for a grimacing whore, is transformed into a male profile. It is a half moon in shape and cratered, a summary image for the harshness of man and, as well, a metaphor for the eroded landscapes of central Australia, a landscape which to Tucker was "a unique prehistoric beast".

The Tucker show has 160 paintings, and is accompanied by an exhibition of his drawings from the Australian National Gallery. For Tucker, drawing has always been an important way of taking his work a step further, particularly when paintings "proved difficult to finish".

The drawings for the exhibition were taken from the collection of 140 held in the Australian National Gallery. The majority of these, in total 92, were purchased by the gallery from Tucker's son Sweeny Reed, an art dealer in Melbourne, in 1975-76, after he discovered them among Tucker's books and papers. Dating from the time Tucker was 14, the drawing exhibition represents a survey of many of the changes in Tucker's imagery to the present.

Commenting on the significance of the show, Mr Mollison said: "Albert Tucker's work has been in a number of group shows in recent years. In the Angry Penguins at the Hayward Gallery London in 1988, many people thought his work was the strongest and most personal in the show. He is an artist who has followed a strong direction, unlike that of any other artist anywhere.

"The exhibition not only shows early Tucker but Tucker working at the peak of his creativity, in the present time. He shows us new treatments for old themes, in pictures larger and more ambitious and more freely painted than before, but with all the intensity of the early periods well intact.

"He has chosen in the past 10 years to summarise a lifetime's preoccupations and he is doing this in pictures that are tougher than before.

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ALBERT TUCKER, THE FIRST OF THE LIVING GREATS REVISITED

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He was born in Melbourne in 1914, a child of the Depression who left school at 14, relying on frequent visits to the public library in Melbourne for his education. Though he had no formal art training, at 17 he discovered the Victorian Artists' Society, where he attended drawing classes after work three nights a week for seven years.