Colonial representations of Tasmanian Aboriginal people are among the most remarkable and contentious expressions of Australian colonial art, and this insightful new publication from the National Gallery of Australia serves to conjure up and interrogate the state’s colonial past by examining the work primarily of artists at the time but also of contemporary artists who are looking today to redress the historical record.
The National Picture: The art of Tasmania’s Black War sheds new light, in particular, on the under-examined figures in this difficult narrative: the artist Benjamin Duterrau, the controversial George Augustus Robinson and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people upon whose land the British settled. Duterrau’s National Picture project is at the heart of this, as he was the colonial artist most interested in Tasmania’s Aboriginal people and the only artist who chose to depict, on a substantial scale, their ‘conciliation’ or ‘pacification’ by Robinson.
Pertinent works by John Glover, Thomas Bock, WB Gould, Robert Neill, Thomas Napier, John Skinner Prout and others, including what is arguably the first oil painting produced by an Aboriginal person, are also examined in the light of the fresh research, presented eloquently and accessibly by Professor Tim Bonyhady and Dr Greg Lehman.
The National Picture will no doubt tantalise art lovers and historians alike, and will also appeal to anyone interested in Australia’s colonial past and in the ongoing interrogation of the historical record by Aboriginal artists and activists.