The colonial sea: the making and displaying of sea pieces in colonial Australia 1840-1890

Abstract

This thesis seeks to provide an understanding of how Australian colonial artists and their audiences responded to the sea in an environment that was remote from the accepted metropolitan modes of visual taste and display. The research covers the period 1840 to 1890: from the ending of convict transportation to the beginning of the transition to nationhood. It seeks to show how the changing character of colonial society influenced the making and display of sea pieces.

Colonial marine painting was a natural extension of the British tradition for making sea pieces that commenced with the arrival of the van de Velde family of Dutch marine painters in the late seventeenth century. However, British marine art has had an uneasy journey in finding its acceptance as fine art: a process which saw its greatest reception in the long eighteenth century, but it failed to retain this standing in the nineteenth century.

Against that wider context, this thesis works from the premise that Australian colonial artists who painted the sea can make little claim to recognition in the traditional canon of ‘high art’. And while a few colonial artists gained some degree of recognition with the metropolitan arbiters of taste, such as the Royal Academy and the various watercolour societies, no colonial artist found ready acceptance for work made in the colonies. And those who did achieve a degree of recognition for their work after leaving Australia very little of Australia is to be found in their metropolitan works.

If Australian colonial marine painting cannot be assessed on the basis of its artistic or technical merit, on what basis can Australian marine painting be evaluated?