Artists and their sitters : a colonial portrait ; a guide to the portrait painters of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 1820-1850
Abstract
Before the advent of photography portraiture could be described
either as art or likeness-taking. A portrait's importance lies in
furnishing the spectator with a visual record of a person's features,
but it may also provide him with a record of another time which is not
verbal. It may yield to the spectator information about a person or
time gone by in a way which is intuitive like music.
When Dr Lhotsky published his remarks about art in general, and
Australian art in particular, he called it an index to the country's
progress towards civilization.