Australian Painting - A brief history.

Aborigines first carried out painting in Australia.

A history of painting in Australia by artists of European stock may be divided into four main phases. 

The first is an early colonial phase (1788-1850) devoted primarily to drawings and paintings which documented the plants, animals and native peoples of the land, the growth of settlement, and the beginnings of colonial life. 

The second is a late colonial phase (1851-84), in which the first serious attempts were made to depict the history and life of the Australian colonies. In this period interest in painting was fostered by the establishment of public galleries in most of the colonies' capitals, and a landscape style derived from European romanticism developed. 

The third phase is the Heidelberg School and its aftermath (1885-1938), in which a distinct style of Australian landscape painting based partly upon plein-air- ("open air") and partly upon impressionist models gradually won acceptance as a native Australian national school. 

The last phase is the modern period (1939 to the 1980s), in which the Heidelberg School and its variants were displaced by successive waves of twentieth-century styles emanating from Europe and later from America.

Our own unique Art however had been born.