Module

This resource is aligned with the Australian Curriculum: Visual Arts for Year 9 and 10 students. It adopts an inquiry approach to develop students’ skills as art historians.

Topic

The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and its principal Sydney-based artists - Julian Ashton, A. Henry Fullwood and Frank Mahony - transformed the way settler colonial Australia was seen both here and around the world.

Topic

The publication of the Picturesque Atlas was situated within a ‘golden age’ of illustration: the great global explosion of mass-produced images that occurred between 1850 and 1900 with the rise of the illustrated press.

Topic

The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia helped to establish the iconography of Australian impressionism, often also identified as the Heidelberg School.

Topic

Augustus Earle (1793–1838) was an artist working in the colony of New South Wales around 1825. He painted several portraits of Bungaree, a notable Aboriginal leader.

Topic

The convict uniform held at the National Library of Australia is the only complete, original convict uniform in Australia. It consists of a jacket, a pair of trousers marked with a broad arrow, a waistcoat, a leather cap and a woollen cap.

Topic

This playbill, or poster, advertising a theatrical performance at the ‘Theatre, Sydney’ on 30 July 1796, is the oldest surviving printed document produced in Australia.

Topic

This image, depicting frontier conflict, is contained in an album compiled and originally owned by Miss Eliza Younghusband.

Topic

Race to the Gold Diggings of Australia is a boxed, children’s board game produced in England around 1855. It is the earliest known board game that has Australia as its theme.

Topic

Housed in a blue-bound folder, in a collection at the National Library of Australia, is a fragment of blue fabric that represents the pursuit of Australian democracy. The folder contains a portion of the Eureka Flag flown at Ballarat, Victoria, during the 1854 Eureka Rebellion. The folder also houses an accompanying explanatory letter dated 13/1/1912 from Fred (F.J.) Riley to his father, Fred Riley.