Ada May Plante, Railway Bridge, Darebin not dated Oil on canvas on composition board Benalla Art Gallery Collection. Ledger Gift 1987 Born New Zealand 1875, arrived Australia 1888, died Melbourne 1950 A perfectionist, shy and intensely private, Ada Plante painted slowly and lived very quietly […]
William Frater, MacDonnell Ranges, Central Australia (c.1950) Oil on board Benalla Art Gallery Collection. Ledger Gift 1983 Born Scotland 1890, arrived Australia 1910, died Melbourne 1974 William ‘Jock’ Frater was an Australian modernist painter based in Melbourne, who challenged the conservative views of art in […]
Arnold Shore, Forest Gums, Flowerdale 1959 Oil on composition board Benalla Art Gallery Collection. Ledger Gift 1980 Born Melbourne 1897, died Melbourne 1963 Arnold Joseph Victor Shore (1897-1963), artist and critic, was born on 5 May 1897 at Windsor, Melbourne. At aged 12 he joined […]
Born Clunes, Victoria, 1861, died Melbourne, 1941 Much is known and has been written about Sir John Campbell Longstaff. He was born in Victoria in 1861, and although at times he worked on the land around Shepparton, his passion was art. Much to the chagrin […]
Born England, 1813, arrived Australia 1832, died Sydney, 1895. Joseph Backler was born in 1813 in England and was transported to Australia aboard the convict ship Portland 18 years later for forging cheques. He was the son of a painter and chose painting as his […]
Born London, England 1801, arrived Australia 1835, died Sydney 1878 Conrad Martens was Australia’s first professional artist. At the age of sixteen he began his art study in London, ending a banking tradition in his family that stretched back to the fifteenth century. Martens left […]
Born Morges, Switzerland 1814, arrived Australia 1865, died Victoria 1888 Louis Buvelot arrived in Australia in 1865 as an accomplished painter with a strong reputation in Europe. Following his studies in Switzerland and Paris in the early 1830s, Buvelot spent eighteen years working under the […]
Edward Roper was born in 1830 and was a consummate traveller, visiting Canada and Australia. He was a writer as well as a painter, lithographer, and illustrator and died in the early twentieth century. Not much is known of him or his artistic output, but […]
Born c.1835, died 1901 Tommy McRae was an indigenous artist born in the 1830s who for much of his life lived and worked around Wahgunyah in NSW. He was known by several names including Tommy Barnes and by his Aboriginal name Yackaduna or Warra-euea. It […]
