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Panel 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 connoisseurs—whose attempts to order and classify the natural world confirmed their own prestigious position in society—craved 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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William Hodges Sarah Stone V. Woodthorpe

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