Senior Lecturer, Critical and Theoretical Studies, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne
Painting the unfamiliar: why the first European paintings of Australian animals look so alien to our eyes
In 1772, Joseph Banks commissioned the foremost painter of animals in England, George Stubbs, to paint a dingo and a kangaroo. To our modern eyes the paintings lack the vitality and strength of the animals we are familiar with in Australia.