Australian Printmakers

Australian Printmakers — 20th Century Etchings and Prints

This category brings together original prints by Australian printmakers of the 20th century, representing the tradition of fine printmaking that developed in Australia across a period of extraordinary artistic productivity and growing national cultural confidence. Working in etching, drypoint, aquatint, lithography and related intaglio and planographic processes, these artists produced works of lasting quality that document both the Australian landscape and the formal concerns of print-making as an independent artistic discipline.

The Australian etching revival of the early 20th century drew on the influence of the broader etching revival that had transformed printmaking in Britain and Europe from the 1850s onwards, as artists reclaimed the etching needle as a medium of primary artistic expression rather than a reproductive tool. Australian artists — many of them trained in Britain and Europe before returning to apply their skills to Australian subjects — brought the aesthetic priorities of the revival to the depiction of the Australian landscape, its cities, its people and its distinctive light and atmosphere.

The Heidelberg School and its successor generations had established a tradition of plein-air landscape observation in Australian painting that printmakers absorbed and extended through the etching medium. Artists working in etching and drypoint brought to Australian landscape subjects the same qualities of direct observation and tonal sensitivity that defined the best European printmaking of the period, producing images of the Australian bush, the harbours and the urban environment that captured the particular character of Australian light and space with a technical command developed through rigorous training and practice.

The institutions that sustained printmaking in 20th-century Australia — the art schools of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, the print workshops associated with major galleries, and the printmaking societies that organised exhibitions and maintained professional standards — provided the infrastructure within which Australian printmaking developed its distinctive voice. Artists including Lionel Lindsay, Norman Lindsay, Sydney Long, Harold Cazneaux and their contemporaries and successors produced bodies of printmaking work that constitute a significant chapter in the history of Australian art.

Original prints by Australian printmakers are collected for their quality as works of art, their connection to significant figures and movements in Australian art history, and their documentation of Australian subjects through a medium that rewards close attention and rewards the collector who values the intimacy and directness of the printed original.