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Janelle Evans, 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

The Kongouro from New Holland, 1772, George Stubbs National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

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. The kangaroo more closely resembles a rodent than a bipedal marsupial. The dingo’s glassy-eyed stare lacks any animation.

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