Home Topics History & Culture Early Victoria: Bushfires, gold rushes and sad bushrangers
Early Victoria: Bushfires, gold rushes and sad bushrangers
By AG STAFF
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28 July 2016
Group studies for Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia, 1852
This pencil drawing shows bushrangers who stole from more than 20 people on St Kilda Street in Melbourne. His sketches show the development of his artwork on bushrangers and the focus on characterisation. Strutt would sometimes depict his bushrangers as miserable rather than the popular trope depicting them as defiant rebels.
William Strutt (1886), pencil and wash, 302 x 563mm, Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia
FROM VICTORIA’S GOLD RUSHES to its bushrangers, English artist William Strutt’s (1825-1915) paintings captured the state’s colonial history in vivid scenes and sketches. William arrived at Melbourne in 1850 and began work as an illustrator painting portraits of people such as explorer Robert O’Hara Burke, who’s famous expedition with William John Wills ended in their tragic deaths. William illustrated the scenes around Burke’s demise in the epic ‘The burial of Burke’ (1911). He also recorded many historical events such as Victoria becoming a separate state and the devastating Victorian bushfire on Black Thursday in 1851. His paintings depict the hardship of colonial life, exploration and the dangers of the environment.
His oil paintings, watercolours, portraits, prints and preparatory sketches will be on display at ‘Heroes and villains: Strutt’s Australia’ exhibition at the State Library of Victoria until 23 October 2016. The exhibition is the first retrospectives of William’s work in Melbourne, it includes pop-up talks of three of his well-known paintings; ‘Bushrangers’ (1887), ‘The burial of Burke’ (1911) and ‘Black Thursday’ (1864).