ABORIGINES

Antique Prints Depicting Aboriginal and First Nations Peoples of Australia

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visitors are kindly advised that this collection includes images and names of people who have passed away.

This category brings together original antique prints and illustrations depicting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, produced by European artists, engravers and publishers from the late 18th through the 19th century. These works constitute a significant body of historical visual documentation, recording encounters between European observers and the First Nations peoples of Australia across the period of initial contact and early colonial settlement.

The earliest antique prints depicting Aboriginal Australians derive from the illustrated accounts of the voyages of exploration that first brought European artists into contact with the peoples of the continent. Artists accompanying the expeditions of Cook, Baudin, Freycinet and their contemporaries produced drawings that were subsequently engraved and published in the official accounts of these voyages, reaching audiences in Britain, France and across Europe. These images — depicting dress, ceremony, weaponry, watercraft and the physical appearance of individuals encountered during the voyages — represent the first systematic visual documentation of Aboriginal peoples made available to the outside world.

Through the 19th century, as colonial settlement extended across the continent, a larger body of visual material was produced by artists, surveyors and illustrators working within the colonial context. Prints depicting Aboriginal men and women, their material culture, their relationship to the land and their encounters with the settler population appear in illustrated travel narratives, geographical works, colonial histories and the illustrated press of the period. These images reflect the perspectives and conventions of their European producers and must be understood in that context, while simultaneously preserving a visual record of peoples, places and practices whose documentation is of enduring historical significance.

These original antique prints are offered as historical documents, collected and studied for their importance to the visual and cultural history of Australia and its First Nations peoples. They are held and handled with the respect owed to materials of this significance, and are offered to collectors, researchers and institutions who approach them in the same spirit.