ABSTRACT
As Australia transformed from white-settler colony (1788), via Dominion (1901), into Free State (Statute of Westminster (1931)) the relationship of the majority of its population with their distant former ‘home’ also evolved. Collecting British art allowed Australian public galleries to maintain a psychological link. In the second half of the nineteenth century the NGV, for example, bought artworks which reminded ‘the colonists of “Home”; of British values, British society, and British breeding in both the human and the animal world’.1 Such bonds were palpable up to 1953 and beyond in a ‘population conventionally regarded as more British than the British’.2 To comprehend the cultural values involved in such transactions it is necessary to understand how Australian identities changed over the period in question. This chapter explores a selection of themes and case studies which reveal how the British art that was purchased by Australian national galleries reflected engagements with key issues of history, religion, empire, monarchy, gender, and class.
