lamdha books -
Catalogue of colonial Australian art

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31691 Adams, Brian The Flowering of the Pacific Being an Account of Joseph Banks' Travels in the South Seas and Florilegium Collins, Sydney NSW, 1986. Hardcover quarto, 194pp. Colour and monochrome illustrations. Spotting to upper text block edges; scraped lower board edges; else near fine in like dustwrapper (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). In 1768 a wealthy young Englishman with a thirst for adventure and a passion for botany set out on his grand tour aboard a small naval ship named the Endeavour, bound for unknown regions in the South Pacific. After returning from that perilous circumnavigation of the globe, Joseph Banks quickly became one of the most celebrated botanists of his day. His ambition was to publish an illustrated record of the many unique plants he gathered at the Endeavour's landfalls. But this was not achieved during his lifetime. It is only now, two centuries later, that the 738 exquisitely engraved copper plates of "Banks' Florilegium" are being published. The narrative of this book encompasses the entire three-year voyage of the Endeavour, an account that incorporates all the spirit of an adventure story. Sumptuously illustrated in colour. Click here to order $40

48317 Andersen, Trevor William Fletcher Trevor Anderson, Sydney NSW, 1983. Hardcover, small quarto, 96pp. Illustrated with colour plates. Includes corrigenda. Minor edgewear to dustwrapper; otherwise very good to near fine. William Fletcher was a painter of still life, figurative and inner-Sydney landscape studies during the 50s and 60s. Of the approximately 440 known works completed by him, 226 are studies of Australian wildflowers. Fletcher's paintings have been acquired by the National Gallery, Canberra and the Rockhampton Gallery. His work is widely represented in private collections in Australia and overseas. Click here to order $20

48044 Bock, Thomas (Diane Dunbar, ed.) Thomas Bock Convict Engraver, Society Portraitist Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery/Australian National Gallery, Launceston TAS & Canberra ACT, 1991. Quarto; paperback; 107pp., with many colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear. Near fine. Click here to order $18

34786 Braddon, Russell Thomas Baines and the North Australian Expedition The Royal Geographical Society/Antler Books Ltd., London, 1986. Square quarto; hardcover, full cloth faux half-binding with gilt spine-titles and decorated endpapers; 160pp., with a colour frontispiece and many monochrome and colour illustrations. Mild wear; spine heel scraped; text block top edge dusted. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed and edgeworn; sunned along the spine panel; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Sketches, water-colours and oil paintings from the 1855-56 North Australian Expedition led by Augustus Gregory. Click here to order $35

92604 Butler, Roger Printed Images in Colonial Australia 1801-1901 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT, 2007. Quarto hardcover; 294pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. Almost before it went to print, this book was destined to be the final word on printing and the first printed works produced in Australia. As head of the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, Roger Butler had unprecedented access to the collected printed material of Australia's colonial period, from theatre posters, to catch-penny pamphlets, to works of art. The book is a sumptuous overview of the process and its productions in the early days of white settlement and deserves a place in the reference library of any serious collector of early Australiana. Click here to order $50

208199 Di Tommaso, Lisa Images of Nature The Art of the First Fleet Natural History Museum, London, 2012. Quarto; gatefold paperback; 111pp., with many colour illustrations. Remainder. New. In 1788, nearly fifteen-hundred people on eleven sailing ships came ashore at Port Jackson in Australia after a gruelling eight month journey from England. This collection of vessels later became known as the First Fleet, and those who sailed in them were the community who established the first European colony in Australia. The Art of the First Fleet depicts the natural history of this extraordinary land, the people and culture of the local indigenous population and the events that marked these initial formative years. The collection, now housed in the Natural History Museum, provides an invaluable record of the wildlife and environment, people and events, as seen through the eyes of the colonists who laid the foundations for the European settlement of Australia. The artists' drawings of the people and culture of the Eora people, the local indigenous population of the area, provide the only lasting visual record of their lives. While images of plants and animals were not always technically accurate, they made a significant contribution to the development of science, allowing experts in Britain to be able to identify and name a large number of new species. Click here to order $22

15124 Dutton, Geoffrey S.T. Gill's Australia Mead & Beckett, Sydney, 1981. Hardcover quarto; yellow boards with black spine titling and lower front board illustration, illustrated endpapers; 160pp., numerous monochrome and a few colour illustrations. Owner's inscription. Mild wear to lower board edges. Mild rubbing to illustrated dustwrapper. Very good to near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. From the moment he stepped ashore and within a few years, S.T. Gill had absorbed the instinctive language of Australia's rocks and trees, wildflowers and light. From then until his tragic death in 1880 he gave the fledgling nation his life and art and produced a unique record of the rough burgeoning of Australia. S.T. Gill was recognised but unrewarded during his life. After his death he lay in a pauper's grave. Fortunately, Gill has found an apt biographer in Geoffrey Dutton, who, after careful research and with great empathy for the artist, has written about the life and works of this humorous, talented and humble man. Click here to order $35

216096 Dutton, Geoffrey White on Black: The Australian Aborigine Portrayed in Art Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1974. Large quarto hardcover; black cloth boards with white upper board and spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 168pp., colour and b&w illustrations. A few small scratches and light wear to lower boards; offsetting to endpapers; toned and spotted text block edges; errata notification pasted to half-title page cause some rippling to page verso. Illustrated dustwrapper worn and chipped at edges with a few tiny tears and scrapes especially at spine panel extremities; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. White on Black is an art book that is also a social history. How the white Europeans saw the black Australians, roughly from 1770 to 1970, and set it down in pencil or ink or paints, is the fascinating measure of their understanding of Australia's Aborigines. Or lack of it - Geoffrey Dutton has included several horrific failures to recognize a common humanity. Savages, noble or debased; 'Indians'; 'A dying race'; Whitefellow's friend; Jacky and Witchetty; beings with 'a peculiar dignity and grace'. They are all here, to the credit or the shame not only of the artists but of all white Australians and Australian visitors. Included are paintings and drawings by artists who accompanied the early French expeditions; the sympathetic drawings of a convict artist like Charles Rodius; the dramatic but accurate oils of Thomas Baines. Many modern Australian artists are also represented - Drysdale, Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Brett Whiteley to name a few. Click here to order $60

81670 Eagle, Mary The Art of Rupert Bunny in the Australian National Gallery Australian National Gallery, Canberra ACT, 1991. Square quarto hardcover; 257pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. A few faint spots on text block edges and dustwrapper spine slightly faded. Near fine otherwise. The Art of Rupert Bunny fully documents the sixty-five paintings by Bunny in the National Collection and examines each with reference to related works and in the context of contemporary influences and styles. Click here to order $45

56800 Galbally, Ann Frederick McCubbin Hutchinson, Melbourne Vic., 1981. Hardcover, quarto, 159pp., monochrome and colour illustrations. Brown board edges and corners worn. Preliminaries and text block edges lightly toned and spotted. Dustwrapper lightly worn at edges and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. McCubbin's strength lay in his love and acceptance of his environment and his understanding of man's ambivalent relationship to the Australian bush. His intense relationship with his native land formed the aesthetic cornerstone of his art. Click here to order $35

90438 Gray, Anne George W. Lambert Retrospective Heroes & Icons National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT, 2007. Quarto; paperback, with gatefold wrappers; 212pp. New. Remainder. George Lambert was one of Australia's most brilliant, witty and influential artists. This book presents the diverse range of Lambert's work from his Australian bush subjects to his Edwardian portraits and figure groups, from his sparkling oil sketches to his major battle paintings and large sculpture. It shows the full breadth of Lambert's approaches to image making and the variety of his handling of pencil, pen and paint as well as his sure draughtsmanship and the seductive glamour and sensual appeal of his paint surfaces. Click here to order $30

15125 Guerard, Eugene von (Introduction by Marjorie Tipping, ed.) An Artist on the Goldfields The Diary of Eugene von Guerard John Currey, O'Neil Publishers, South Yarra Vic., 1982. Hardcover, quarto, 84pp. Colour and monochrome illustrations. Text block edges lightly spotted. Dustwrapper with multiple scrapes on upper rear panel. Otherwise very good and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Arriving in 1852 Eugene von Guerard was already a recognised artist in Germany. From the first day of his voyage and throughout his time in Geelong and on the Ballarat goldfields he kept a diary and sketchbooks which captured his experiences. The diary published here is accompanied by an introduction, biography and interpretive annotations which give additional information about the entries. Von Guerard's quick eye and humour, and the intimacy of his sketches, provide an entertaining and significant record of one of the most exciting years in Australian history. His resolve to record his experiences continued in spite of the feverish haste of rushing from one strike to another, working long hours and in all weathers until dirt and flies became a way of life. His sense of adventure and comradeship and his spirit of enquiry never faltered, and the record presented here is as diverse and delightful as the interests of its author. Click here to order $30

65775 Jackson, Jacqueline James R. Jackson, Art was his Life... Bay Books, Sydney, 1991. Quarto hardcover; black boards with white upper board and spine titling; 122pp., mainly colour illustrations. Mild rubbing to board corners and faint spotting to text block edges. Otherwise near fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. James Jackson was born in New Zealand in 1882 and was a founder of the Australian Academy of Art; he studied in Sydney and Paris where he met many French impressionists and famous Australian artists. A century of changes, including the development of modes of travel, wars, survival through two depressions, tragedy, romance and divorce form an interesting background for the story of his life and pictures. Click here to order $85

214103 Kerr, Joan, (ed.) The Dictionary of Australian Artists Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870 Oxford University Press, Melbourne Vic., 1992. First edition: quarto; hardcover, faux quarter-binding with gilt spine titles on a teal label and decorative endpapers; 889pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Moderate wear; slightly shaken; a heavy bump to the spine heel; light spotting to the text block edges and top edge dusted. Dustwrapper a little rubbed and edgeworn; sunned along the spine panel; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Laid in: a press release concerning the book's publication. Click here to order $400

32608 King, Jonathan The Other Side of the Coin A Cartoon History of Australia Cassell Australia, Stanmore NSW, Australia, 1976. Hardcover quarto, 239pp., numerous monochrome illustrations. Preliminaries foxed, text block edges spotted; boards rubbed at edges, few small stains; dustwrapper sunned around spine panel. Very good in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The picture one gets of Australian history through the eyes of cartoonists is vastly different from any other version. For no matter what their political colour, the artists are usually critically-minded individuals. Traditionally their cartoons take the side of the little man against public hypocrisy, deceit or corruption. Because they enjoy more freedom than those tied to the printed word, they have been able to expose government scandals and official blundering, and cut the politicians of the day down to size. By giving them an historical platform, we are thus enabling them to put together an alternative interpretation of Australian history. They have had a rich field in which to work. Australian history has been full of convict oppression, rebellions, gold rushes, bushrangers, ill-fated explorers, heroic campaigns and unpopular wars... There have been plenty of blots on the copybook into which the cartoonists could dip their pens.... - Jonathan King, preface. Click here to order $24

201504 Lane, Terence Australian Impressionism National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Vic., 2007. Quarto; gatefold paperback; 352pp., with many colour illustrations. Minor wear. Near fine. Exhibition catalogue. This book hopes to take up the story from the hugely successful Golden Summers exhibition, concentrating however on the five key initiators of the movement and limiting the timescale to the period 1883-1897. Tom Roberts, in company with the Paris-trained Spanish artists Ramon Casas and Laurea Barrau, his Melbourne friend Dr William Maloney and John Russell - the only Australian painter to be directly in touch with Monet and mainstream Impressionism, visited Spain in 1883. It was also the year in which Roberts worked briefly under Gerome at Julian's Academy in Paris. The exhibition and catalogue concentrates on the participants in the first camps at Box Hill, Mentone and Eaglemont and does not extend to major figures of the second phase of Australian plein-air painting including the group who worked at Charterisville in the Heidelberg/Eaglemont area. Click here to order $90

58320 Macdonald, James (Introduction by Robert Holden) The Art of F. McCubbin Forty five illustrations in colour and black and white, with essay by James MacDonald and some remarks on Australian art by the artist Boolarong Publications, Brisbane Qld., 1986. Facsimile reprint: hardcover, folio, 97pp., monochrome and colour illustrations. Text block edges lightly toned. Leather boards with gilt title on spine and gilt decoration on front; small scrape to upper front; slight rubbing to tail of spine; other minor shelf wear. No dustwrapper. Else very good. Facsimile edition of the limited 1916 edition and regarded as Australia's first significant art monograph. Click here to order $40

54405 Olsen, Penny Feather and Brush CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2001. Quarto, hardcover; blue boards with gilt spine titling, blue endpapers; 227pp., Colour plates and illustrations. Minor wear; mild fraying to lower board corners; slight rubbing to dustwrapper, mildly sunned spine. Very good to near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Traces the 300 year history of Australian bird art and contains more than 250 images representing the work of a hundred artists. Click here to order $150

203235 Organ, Michael (ed.) Conrad Martens - signed Journal of a Voyage from England to Australia, 1833-35, via South America and the Pacific Islands aboard HMS Hyacinth, Indus, HMS Beagle, Peruvian and Black Warrior State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney NSW, 1994. Quarto; paperback, bound pamphlet with cloth spine, with a monochrome portrait tipped-on to the front cover; 52pp., with some monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; signed and numbered in ink on the title page by the previous owner and the author. Very good. Number 16 of a limited edition run of 100 copies. Click here to order $50

33452 Phipps, Jennifer Artists' Gardens Flowers and Gardens in Australian Art, 1780s-1980s Bay Books, [n.d.]. Hardcover quarto; blue boards with white upper board and spine titling; 216pp., numerous colour plates. Inscription. Boards rubbed and faded at edges; spotting to endpaper edges; mildly toned text block edges; dustwrapper slightly faded. Very good with wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. "Artists' Gardens" captures the beauty and majesty of nature. Flowers, gardens and landscapes are transformed by the artists' palette in over 100 oils, watercolours, drawings and etchings ranging from the exquisite detail of early botanical artists such as John Lewin and Ferdinand Bauer to the abstract representation of modern artists such as Imants Tillers and Vicki Varvaressos. Click here to order $40

34147 Rienits, Rex & Thea Early Artists of Australia Angus & Robertson, Sydney NSW, 1963. Quarto; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles on a black label and decorative endpapers; 246pp., with a colour frontispiece and 38pp. of colour and monochrome plates Moderate wear; slightly shaken;, spine extremities softened; text block edge lightly toned with some spotting; retailer's ink stamp to the verso of the flyleaf. Dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn; spine panel sunned; some light chipping to the spine panel extremities and flap-turns: now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The discovery of Australia by Europeans meant the revelation of a new continent - landscape, people, animals, birds, plants - all strange and often astonishing. Some of those who saw the new world at first hand naturally attempted to record it pictorially, for the information of those at home as well as for their own satisfaction. There was a growing demand for natural history drawings, seamen wanted practical sketches of the coast, and so for one reason or another many drawings, paintings, and engravings were made, depicting Australia both in its primitive state and in its first stage of settlement. It was in collecting such pictures that the authors first began to research the lives of those who made them. Click here to order $40

36090 Rowan, Ellis The Flower Hunter The adventures in Northern Australia and New Zealand of flower painter Ellis Rowan Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, nd [1995]. Hardcover, quarto, 216pp., colour illustrations. Very minor wear only; near fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. "The Flower Hunter" was originally published in 1898 under the title "A Flower Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand". It is a fascinating account of Ellis Rowan's travels, documenting the primitive conditions and the dangers she faced in the pursuit of new species of wildflowers to paint. Rowan travelled to Queensland in 1887 and 1891 to visit friends and to paint. It is from the second trip that the letters to her husband reproduced in "The Flower Hunter" derive, although incidents and experiences from her first trip are incorporated. Reproduced for the first time since 1898, the book tells an engrossing story of a courageous woman, and presents a revealing portrait of colonial life in Australia. Click here to order $25

11420 Salter, Elizabeth The Lost Impressionist A Biography of John Peter Russell Angus & Robertson, London, 1976. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 209pp., many colour and monochrome plates. Mild wear; spotting to text block edges. Dustwrapper spine slightly faded with some chipping at extremities; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $30

58608 Smith, Bernard European Vision and the South Pacific Second Edition Harper & Row, Sydney, nd [1984]. Hardcover, quarto; navy boards with gilt spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 370pp., monochrome and colour illustrations. Mild rubbing to board corners and faint spotting to text block edges. Illustrated dustwrapper slightly sunned along spine panel, now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. This classic study discusses the European interpretation of the Pacific in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It considers the work of artists attached to scientific voyages of discovery and exploration from the time of Cook to the time of Dumont d'Urville and elucidates the ways in which their work is related to the scientific interests and prevailing ideas of their era. Smith first analyses the role that the opening of the Pacific to Europeans played in the development and sustenance of romantic taste, in a new category of landscape, and in the formulation and acceptance in scientific circles of the theory of natural selection. Against this background, he then describes in detail the emergence of Australian colonial art, in terms of both its European origin and the geographical realities of the local environment. Click here to order $80

11380 Spate, Virginia Tom Roberts Landsdowne Press, Melbourne Vic., 1980. Reprint (revised). Large quarto hardcover, 161pp., 38 plates, 49 monochrome illustrations. Minimal wear, toned text block edges. Otherwise near fine in like dustwrapper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Roberts was one of the first Australian painters to attempt to develop a distinctively Australian style of painting. In this, he was clearly influenced by the European art of his day, having travelled and studied in England and Europe. But always he modified techniques to suit the Australian scene. Click here to order $40

65135 Splatt, William, & Dugald McLellan The Heidelberg School The Golden Summer of Australian Painting Lloyd O'Neil, South Yarra Vic., 1986. Quarto hardcover, 136pp., mainly colour illustrations. Minor wear; very few very faint spots on top text block edge; dustwrapper faded along spine and upper front edge; minimal edgewear (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Otherwise very good to near fine. The 150 illustrations, 73 in colour, are accompanied by a short account of the origins, flowering and eventual decline of the Heidelberg School. In addition to the leaders - Roberts, McCubbin, Streeton and Condor - there are notes on lesser known painters such as David Davies, Walter Withers, Girolamo Nerli, Jane Sutherland, Tom Humphrey and Clara Southern. Click here to order $50

210089 Stephen, Ann (ed.) Visions of a Republic The Work of Lucien Henry Paris: Noumea: Sydney Powerhouse Publishing, Haymarket, 2001. Quarto hardcover; red boards with silver gilt spine titling, decorated endpapers; 240pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only. Near fine in illustrated dustwrapper. Visions of a republic is a history, a biography and an art book which publishes for the first time the work of French-Australian artist Lucien Henry. Lucien's major work - 'Australian decorative arts: one hundred studies and designs' - comprises beautiful watercolours which reveal his vision for a public art and architecture based on Australian flora and fauna. Five chapters cover Henry's life in Paris, his exile in the South Pacific, his impact on pre-Federation Sydney, his ambitious project for the creation of a national identity, his role in architecture and interior design, and the legacy of his vision. 'Henry's accomplishment during the twelve years he spent in Sydney is impressive. He was remarkably receptive to the creative opportunities in a society so different from his own, and he established himself at the creative centre of that society with remarkable speed.'This book and the exhibition accomplishes an important act of reparation in publishing and displaying Henry's designs ...At last we can see Henry's brilliantly coloured designs based on waratahs, staghorns, flannel flowers, seahorses, lyrebird capitals, and emu-egg and starfish friezes. We can now dream of his crematorium in the form of a colossal stenocarpus...'Or we could dream that some benefactor might realise the design for a drinking fountain formed from lyrebirds and staghorn ferns or the waratah pleasure dome in the Botanic Gardens with iron-bark columns and staghorn capitals'. - from the foreword by Virginia Spate. Click here to order $40

98809 Ure Smith, Sydney, & Bertram Stevens (eds.) The Art of J.J. Hilder Angus & Robertson Ltd., Sydney NSW, 1918. Quarto; hardcover, quarter-bound in papered boards with gilt spine titles, upper board titles and an upper board decoration; 49pp., with 5 monochrome illustrations, a tipped-in colour frontispiece, 36 plates likewise and 16 monochrome plates. Moderate wear; shaken; boards rubbed with some marks and slightly bowed; softening to the spine extremities; text block edges toned; offset to the preliminaries and tipped-in plates; spine slightly cracked. Dustwrapper rubbed and edgeworn; lightly chipped at the spine panel extremities and flap-turns; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. A very good copy. Click here to order $250

81392 Withers, Walter (Andrew MacKenzie, ed.) The Forgotten Manuscripts Mannagum Press, Lilydale Vic., 1987. Quarto hardcover; 144pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper lightly faded along spine and lower edges (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film); otherwise minor wear only. Very good to near fine. The English born painter Walter Withers is known for his moody landscapes of Victorian scenes around Heidelberg, Eaglemont and Creswick. In the brotherhood of the Heidelberg school of painters he was called 'The Colonel' for his ability to organise others, and his old farmstead at Charterisville became the home for a generation of painters in the 1890s. His indefatigable wife Fanny wrote four manuscripts on the life and art of her husband, one of which became the small publication produced by Alexander McCubbin, The Life and Art of Walter Withers - as part of his Australian Art Book Series of the 1920s. Fanny Withers played an important role not only in acting as housewife and mother to Walter's six children, but also in supporting and encouraging her husband and helping run the business side of his life. Her strong will and character, ceaseless energy and her eagerness to promote her husband's career had her entertaining guests and defending assiduously his art works against the critics. Her pen was ever ready, poised to strike at those who unwittingly or unjustifiably attacked his works. In one instance a series of letters were exchanged with a Mr. Carrington of the Argus who deigned to criticise adversely Wither's work prior to the exhibition. In her protest, Fanny Withers wrote: ' ..I do understand the function of an Art Critic - when my husband and I lived in Paris, I was Musical Critic for one of the London Papers, but I never wrote about a performance without hearing it'. To which Carrington replied: 'You may, or should know that a wife's evidence for or against her husband is absolutely and entirely valueless for sound and very obvious reasons'. That Carrington had to resort to such a statement is probably tantamount to an admission that his match had been met. Fanny did not confine herself to only these pursuits. She was a teacher in Heidelberg and Eltham and was passionately concerned with the social welfare of the poorer members of the community. She wrote a novel, Boarded Out; a Story Founded on Fact which was published in Melbourne by Fraser & Jenkinson in 1907, sending out copies of the book to influential members in the community including various local and state members of the government as a means of helping these unfortunate children. The four manuscripts, letters, photographic images of the family, studios and the works of Walter Withers are all included here. Click here to order $30