Artists and their sitters : a colonial portrait ; a guide to the portrait painters of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 1820-1850

Buscombe, Eve

Artists and their sitters : a colonial portrait ; a guide to the portrait painters of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 1820-1850

Date

1970

Authors

Buscombe, Eve

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.