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Lot Essay
Never suited to working for his father, a prosperous merchant and banker, George French Angas, first left England in 1841, aged nineteen, to seek picturesque and colourful subjects for his sketches, which illustrated the books he published. In 1844 he arrived in Australia perhaps to look over his father's commercial interests but almost immediately joined an expedition to locate suitable land to settle. During this trip and others throughout South Australia he sketched the landscape, fauna and especially the Aboriginal people.
Before he left Adelaide for home, Angas organised the first art exhibition held in South Australia in the Legislative Council Chambers in which numerous portraits and studies of Aborigines were included, probably including these watercolours. These were shown again, at the Royal Hotel, Sydney, when he visited on his way to England via Cape Horn and Rio de Janeiro.
In London Angas showed his work with the British and Foreign Institution, and in April, after making a presentation of his work to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, showed three hundred works at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. The paintings were described as 'entirely executed on the spot, from Life and Nature' and were accompanied by examples of ethnographic material collected in Australia and New Zealand as well as an orphaned Maori youth, James Pomara, he had brought with him. The exhibition was very well received and reviews praised the veracity of the portraits, "The portraits are extremely well executed, and present an individuality and character, which is the surest guarantee of their correctness." Morning Herald, London, 6 April 1846.
The portraits of Aborigines formed the basis for the lithographic plates in South Australia Illustrated, which Angas published in 1846, and Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: Being an Artist's Impressions of Countries and Peoples at the Antipodes, published in 1847.
Angas returned to Australia to settle in Adelaide in 1850 where he established a studio, painting watercolour portraits and landscapes, as well as giving lessons. Following the discovery of gold, Angas visited the diggings in New South Wales and Victoria as an artist and unsuccessful digger. Throughout this time Angas sketched and published lithographs, but an artist's life in Australia was precarious and he accepted a position as Secretary and Accountant at the Australian Museum in 1853. Angas continued to work as an artist but it was his work at the Museum, as a preparator and conchologist, that set the pattern of his last years in Australia.
Back in London Angas wrote and published accounts of his time in Australia and the Pacific both illustrated with wood engravings after his sketches. But it was his work as a conchologist that occupied his later years.
Angas's portraits and descriptive watercolours of a variety of Aboriginal people he saw and sketched on his travels around South Australia show his fascination for their customs and way of life. Men are posed in groups, in varying stages of initiation, or throwing spears and women demonstrate how they carry their babies with the aid of a reed mat. In one of the most lively of these studies a Warrior of Mount Barker shows the dramatic body painting in red ochre, stripes running horizontally across the torso, which compliments the red and white painted shield. In another we see the ritual scarification of a man's arm beneath western clothing. Traditional, and non-traditional costume and body decoration is observed and depicted. Some portrait heads, draped with blankets, like Roman togas, with the braces of an overall, or even a shirt, cravat and waistcoat depict individuals with great dignity.
Angas's watercolours are remarkable records of a people on the edge of, and at varying stages of, being absorbed into, or obliterated by, European culture.
We are grateful to John McPhee for providing this catalogue entry.
Before he left Adelaide for home, Angas organised the first art exhibition held in South Australia in the Legislative Council Chambers in which numerous portraits and studies of Aborigines were included, probably including these watercolours. These were shown again, at the Royal Hotel, Sydney, when he visited on his way to England via Cape Horn and Rio de Janeiro.
In London Angas showed his work with the British and Foreign Institution, and in April, after making a presentation of his work to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, showed three hundred works at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. The paintings were described as 'entirely executed on the spot, from Life and Nature' and were accompanied by examples of ethnographic material collected in Australia and New Zealand as well as an orphaned Maori youth, James Pomara, he had brought with him. The exhibition was very well received and reviews praised the veracity of the portraits, "The portraits are extremely well executed, and present an individuality and character, which is the surest guarantee of their correctness." Morning Herald, London, 6 April 1846.
The portraits of Aborigines formed the basis for the lithographic plates in South Australia Illustrated, which Angas published in 1846, and Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: Being an Artist's Impressions of Countries and Peoples at the Antipodes, published in 1847.
Angas returned to Australia to settle in Adelaide in 1850 where he established a studio, painting watercolour portraits and landscapes, as well as giving lessons. Following the discovery of gold, Angas visited the diggings in New South Wales and Victoria as an artist and unsuccessful digger. Throughout this time Angas sketched and published lithographs, but an artist's life in Australia was precarious and he accepted a position as Secretary and Accountant at the Australian Museum in 1853. Angas continued to work as an artist but it was his work at the Museum, as a preparator and conchologist, that set the pattern of his last years in Australia.
Back in London Angas wrote and published accounts of his time in Australia and the Pacific both illustrated with wood engravings after his sketches. But it was his work as a conchologist that occupied his later years.
Angas's portraits and descriptive watercolours of a variety of Aboriginal people he saw and sketched on his travels around South Australia show his fascination for their customs and way of life. Men are posed in groups, in varying stages of initiation, or throwing spears and women demonstrate how they carry their babies with the aid of a reed mat. In one of the most lively of these studies a Warrior of Mount Barker shows the dramatic body painting in red ochre, stripes running horizontally across the torso, which compliments the red and white painted shield. In another we see the ritual scarification of a man's arm beneath western clothing. Traditional, and non-traditional costume and body decoration is observed and depicted. Some portrait heads, draped with blankets, like Roman togas, with the braces of an overall, or even a shirt, cravat and waistcoat depict individuals with great dignity.
Angas's watercolours are remarkable records of a people on the edge of, and at varying stages of, being absorbed into, or obliterated by, European culture.
We are grateful to John McPhee for providing this catalogue entry.