‘A lady so long deceased’: The death of the historical muse in australian painting, 1880-1911

Matthew C. Potter*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    This chapter challenges the view that historical painting was irrelevant in Australia during the long nineteenth century. The historiographical reasons for this oversight are examined alongside the use of history by historians such as George William Rusden and George Arnold Wood to curate a discrete national spirit. These writers presented Liberal ideals familiar to Britons in the UK and Australia. Against this context, the artworks of Emanuel Phillips Fox, John Longstaff, Artur Jose Loureiro, and William Strutt produced between 1892 and 1911 are reconsidered, as are their representions of the lives and deaths of James Cook, Robert O’Hara Burke, and William John Wills. The artistic decisions and activities undertaken in composing these images, their institutional frameworks, and their critical reception are examined in order to consider these works as complex engagements with the alternative imaginative and documentary functions that were proposed for historical art in the nineteenth century.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationRepresenting the Past in the Art of the Long Nineteenth Century
    Subtitle of host publicationHistoricism, Postmodernism, and Internationalism
    EditorsMatthew C. Potter
    Place of PublicationLondon
    PublisherTaylor & Francis
    Pages213-239
    Number of pages27
    Edition1st
    ISBN (Electronic)9781351004176
    ISBN (Print)9781138544352
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 30 Sept 2021

    Publication series

    NameRoutledge Research in Art History
    PublisherRoutledge

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