1450 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



encouraged these silent workers. Art galleries have been founded in most of the colonial 

 capitals, but they consist in the main of collections of specimens of the work of foreign 

 artists, with a few pictures painted by some talented Australians ; but these collections 

 of pictures can no more be regarded as evidencing the progress of Australian art, than 

 the public libraries of the various colonies can be regarded as evidencing the advance 

 .of Australian literature. 



The first colony to bring together a noteworthy collection of pictures into a public 

 gallery was Victoria, and for a long while the National Art Gallery in Melbourne was 

 the centre of artistic interest in Australia. The National Art Gallery in Sydney grew 

 out of the institution known as the New South Wales Academy of Art, established in 

 1871, which now and then brought together the works of local men in that and the 

 neighbouring colonies for purposes of public exhibition. The Government aided it with 

 a grant of ,500 in 1874, and another of ,1,000 in 1875. From the International 

 Exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne in 1870 and 1880, however, really dates the 

 awakening of anything like an intelligent public interest in the progress of art in 

 Australia. The fine collections of pictures by leading European artists which were then 

 for the first time exhibited to a colonial public, directed the popular taste in these 

 matters, and brought those who had hitherto known of the world of art only through 

 books into actual contact with the foreign artistic achievement of the age, and thus 

 stimulated local efforts. The first sign of this awakening of taste was the purchase of 

 some of the best pictures for the Sydney and Melbourne Galleries, and from this point 

 the National Gallery of New South Wales dates its origin proper. The new institution 

 absorbed the old Academy of Art, and with the best of its pictures, added to judicious 

 purchases at the Exhibition, and subsequently of pictures and statuary through a selec- 

 tion committee of leading artists in England, developed in the course of a few years 

 into the present promising collection, which is now valued at upwards of ,50,000. The 

 vote of Parliament for Art purposes is administered' by a board of trustees, under whose 

 authority the subsidy allotted for the purpose is carefully expended. The Galleries in 

 Melbourne and Sydney are continually 'being added to by the purchase of new pictures, 

 and every year these national collections become more valuable and more intrinsically 

 interesting. Several of the other colonies have also made praiseworthy efforts in the 

 same direction, and some of the provincial towns, like Ballarat in Victoria, have achieved 

 some progress towards the formation of galleries of art. Here and there in the larger 

 Australian cities, too, there have for years past been private citizens of wealth and 

 taste who have given money and time to the collection of works of art, and who have 

 in times past allowed the public free access to their galleries, or by gifts to public 

 institutions increased the art-wealth of the colonies. From time to time, also, collections 

 of valuable pictures have been gathered from the selections at Home and sent out to 

 Australia, where the opportunity thus offered the people of the colonies to see what is 

 going on in the art-world has done much to educate the popular taste and cultivate the 

 artistic perceptions. In this way the work of the development of this side of the 

 Australian character has gone on, until the prospect of its further development in the 

 future has arrived at its present promising stage. 



A result of this awakening of the artistic taste in Australia has been the formation 



