Artist Abroad

The collection of 161 drawings and watercolour paintings by Augustus Earle now in the possession of the National Library of Australia consitutes the greater part of his work to have survived and is, all things considered, the most impressive single component of the Nan Kivell Collection. The son of an American painter and loyalist, James Earl, the young Augustus Earle (born 1793) studied at the Royal Academy London, and developed considerable talent as an artist in portraiture, figure, and landscape painting. At an early age he also developed a disposition for travel and by the time of his death in 1838 was one of the most widely-travelled artists of his time, having visited the Mediterranean, South America, Australia, New Zealand, the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, the Pacific Islands, South-east Asia, and India. One of the last of the travelling artists to work extensively in the days prior to the introduction of photography, Earle’s work constitutes an invaluable record of life on many of the frontiers of European expansion. Because his training was an all-round one he has left us not only a varied picture of exotic landscape but also many vivid illustrations of colonial life, and of native life and custom in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.