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2 BRILLIANT CURIOSITIES
The colonisation of Australia
coincided with the new bird science, ornithology, and a
wide popular interest in birds. A ready European market
of gentleman connoisseurswhose attempts to order and
classify the natural world confirmed their own prestigious
position in societycraved specimens from the new world,
preserved as skins or in art. Almost every ship arriving
in the southern seas carried its band of enthusiastic artists
and collectors and most early colonial artists of Australian
birds served this passion for modern science. They sketched
birds as specimens from nature or, working here
and in Europe, from bird skins.
In both Europe and Australia, a number of bird artists
were women. Not permitted to join life drawing classes, many women found natural history
offered suitably genteel and remunerative subjects.
The colonisation of Australia also coincided exactly with
the flowering of print culture: the illustrative engravings, lithographic and other colour
print technologies and fine book making that have brought images of Australian birds to
the world.
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