While treasures abound in our art galleries, many more are hidden away. At any one time, only a small percentage of a collection might be on display.
Here, curators and directors at Victoria’s regional galleries tell us about some of the oldest or most storied items in their holdings.
Emma Busowsky, curator, Bendigo Art Gallery
The painting isn’t the oldest item in the collection but it is the first acquisition. By W.E.D. Stuart, it shows Pall Mall, the main boulevard in Bendigo. You can tell the artist has chosen to show the town’s affluence, depicting well-dressed women and men in top hats.
Detail of W.E.D. Stuart’s Pall Mall from Bull Street, c.1860.Credit: Courtesy Bendigo Art Gallery
At the time, circa 1860, Bendigo was establishing itself as a permanent town. Gold had been discovered in 1851. The work is also unfinished, featuring a ghostly figure. We are not sure why it is unfinished, but one theory is that the artist may have been in jail. The work centres on the hotel rather than some of the more grand buildings, which may suggest it was a commission.
Born in London in 1827, William Evans Dutton Stuart made his way here in search of gold. He did exhibit at the Royal Academy, but there is no evidence that he was made a member. (Although I note that in his obituary it said he was!)
Like so many, he came to try his fortunes on the goldfields but, also like many, he had little success so turned to other things. He established a studio as an artist – you can see in the work on the left-hand side the remains of his name. In fact, his studio was a little further up the road towards Hargreaves Street. Stuart also decorated shop signs and coaches. We know he did spend some time in Sandhurst Gaol – Bendigo was then known as Sandhurst – possibly because he hadn’t paid fines or was in debt, which wasn’t uncommon at the time.
According to Art UK, Stuart was noted as both an amateur actor with the Bendigo Volunteer Dramatic Club and as a schoolteacher.
The work is on display in Drury Court in a collection display called For the delight of the people: the origins of Bendigo Art Gallery’s collection, which runs until September 2025.
While you’re there see: Living Connections: Reflections on care, kinship, and Country. This selection of contemporary paintings by artists from across Australia, including First Nations artists and those who call Central Victoria home, highlights diverse natural environments, unique cultural practices, and shared artistic traditions.
Suzette Wearne, curator, McClelland Gallery
A victorious Saint George on his majestic steed having just slain the dragon is depicted in this important print by the foremost German Renaissance artist, Albrecht Dürer (1471—1528).
Albrecht Dürer’s St George on horseback, 1508.Credit: Courtesy of McClelland Gallery
The work is executed with great technical precision, demonstrating the artist’s command of the copper engraving process. Variance in the arrangement, density and direction of the linework conveys the horse’s great muscularity and volume, and the lustre and detail of St George’s armour.
Durer was commercially successful and was celebrated during his lifetime. Savvy enough to value his “brand”, he was the first artist to sign his prints, using a distinctive logo comprised of his initials, shown here beneath the date.
Printmaking was the first democratic art form. While paintings were most often single entities available for viewing only by society’s privileged, prints were made in multiples, accessible to the poor and easy to transport across borders for wider recognition.
St George on horseback was gifted to McClelland by the late Dr John Orde Poynton, a collector of rare books and prints, along with 150 other works, in 1992.
While you’re there see: Brian Robinson. Not many things convey the sentience of the land and ocean quite the same way as the large-scale black-and-white works by Australia’s pre-eminent First Nations artist Brian Robinson.
Danny Lacy, director, Shepparton Art Museum
It wasn’t until the 1970s that ceramics became a focus of the gallery and now we have one of the largest and best collections in regional Australia.
Spruce ginger beer bottle, 1830. Made by Jonathon Leak.Credit: Shepparton Art Museum
A beautiful Merric Boyd vase was donated to the gallery in 1974 and this set off a lightbulb in then-director Peter Timms’ head saying, ‘maybe we should collect historical Australian ceramics’. Between 1973 and 1980, he would go down to Melbourne, sometimes with petty cash, he would raid op shops, he would go to auction houses, and he built this quite fantastic collection of historical ceramics.
In 1978, he pulled together some funds – $1000 from the Caltex-Victorian government art fund – and he took that to an auction in Sydney and bought all of these amazing historical ceramics. This ginger beer bottle is one of the works he bought at that auction. At the time, people thought he was mad – people from other institutions thought, “why are you spending $1000 on old ceramics?”
This ginger beer bottle is the oldest ceramic in our collection, from circa 1830. Jonathon Leak, who is the artisan, came over from the UK as a convict and was involved in some of the early potteries in Sydney.
It’s such a simple, beautiful little bottle. It’s stoneware, pretty solid and quite beautifully built. When you pick it up, you can feel it is quite solid but if you dropped it, it would smash.
From what I understand, these bottles were used for beer, ginger beer and drinks in general. There were many breweries at the time and the “spruce” in the name usually referred to an ingredient because some part of the spruce tree was used in the brewing. The ceramics were a way of keeping the beer cool as well; there would have been a little cork in the top.
Though not on permanent display currently, it is in the collection room. Our ceramic collection is not boxed up, it’s in open storage so you can take people through and they see behind the scenes. We’ve set it up chronologically; there are probably 3000-4000 ceramics objects in the collection.
While you’re there see: Big Ceramic Energy, a selection of Australian, First Nations and international contemporary artists whose creative practices push the boundaries of the ceramic medium. Drawn from SAM’s collection.
Lisa Sullivan, senior curator, Geelong Gallery
One of over 200 illustrations originally designed for Johann Grüninger’s 1502 edition of Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, published in Strasbourg, France, this woodcut is considered one of the most influential illustrated books of the early 16th century.
Detail of The vain struggle of the Trojans 1529, woodcut and letterpress. Late Master of the Gruninger Workshop. Jean Crespin (publisher).Credit: Courtesy of Geelong Gallery
In the late 1520s, Lyon-based publisher Jean Crespin gained access to the blocks to release a revised edition, a copy of which is the origin of this single sheet consisting of letterpress text and image.
The scene comes from Virgil’s epic poem written between 29 and 19BC that recalls the events surrounding the fall of Troy, including the moment when the Trojans, urged by Coroebus, attempt to rescue Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and of Queen Hecuba of Troy, who had been abducted by Ajax the Lesser. Cassandra appears in the centre of the composition, surrounded by key figures in the narrative, many of whom are identified by name. Despite the complexity of Ajax and Cassandra’s story, it has inspired numerous artistic responses over centuries.
The woodcut process is acknowledged as the oldest form of printmaking, integral to early book illustration and the dissemination of images. As an early example of the printed medium, this work – acquired through the generosity of local donors – is an important inclusion in Geelong Gallery’s collection with its strong focus on Australian and international printmaking.
While you’re there see: Rauschenberg & Johns – Significant Others. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns are considered two of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Deliberately moving against the grain of Abstract Expressionism, the dominant art movement of the time, became the crucible for both their lifelong practices.
Louise Tegart, director, Art Gallery of Ballarat
The earliest work in the collection is The Life of St Wilfred, Archbishop of York by Eadmer, who was a precentor or a person who led the congregation in its singing at Christ Church in Canterbury. The gorgeously illuminated manuscript dates from circa 1150.
The Life of St Wilfred, Archbishop of York by Eadmer. Credit: Courtesy of Art Gallery of Ballarat
The Art Gallery of Ballarat has been blessed by generations of donors who have enriched the collection with outstanding artworks. While the collection focuses on Australian art, in 1944 the gallery received a gift from Colonel Richard Armstrong Crouch. Born and raised in Ballarat, Crouch was an officer in the First AIF and a member of federal parliament. His donation to the gallery was 14 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and six other documents including two missives written by Pope Innocent XI. Crouch acquired the works during travels in Europe and chose particularly ornamental volumes.
Some of Crouch’s medieval donations are on show in Medieval to Metal – the Art and Evolution of the Guitar.
While you’re there see: JXSH MVIR: Forever I live. Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji artist Muir was born in Ballarat and died in 2022, aged 30. The works in the exhibition reflect Muir’s ongoing artistic legacy, emphasising his love of family and community, drawing on a range of themes including cultural identity, the impacts and legacies of colonisation, mental health, addiction, personal loss and grief.
Patrice Sharkey, head of exhibitions and public programs, Tarrawarra Museum of Art
One of the oldest works is a painting titled Women with Goats by Ian Fairweather, one of 12 paintings at TarraWarra Museum of Art by Fairweather (1891–1974). It was created between 1933 and 1969, during which time Fairweather lived in Bali, the Philippines, China, India and Australia.The oil painting, Women with Goats, c. 1933, was painted in Bali.
Ian Fairweather’s Women with Goats c. 1933Credit: Courtesy of TarraWarra Museum of Art
Like most of Fairweather’s work, Women with Goats, feels of out synch with the time in which it was made – its visual language is almost ahead of its time. The fact that in the Australian canon, there was no one like him is a large part of what drew me to his paintings.
Described as a “palette-knife study”, author Murray Bail wrote of the piece in his 2009 book about the artist “in placement of colours, it displays Fairweather’s early sophistication and strength of forms”. It will be part of an exhibition opening next year showing selected works from the collection.
One of Australia’s most important and influential artists, Fairweather’s style is unique. “A combination of abstraction and figuration joined through a meandering use of the line,” according to Steven Alderton, who curated an exhibition of his work for TarraWarra in 2015.
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Art critic Robert Hughes said Fairweather was “the best abstract painter … Australia ever harboured”, and Bernard Smith saidhe was “one of the most inventive, personal and original of the semi-abstract painters at work in Australia”.
Born in Scotland, Fairweather left the United Kingdom in 1928 and never returned to live there for any extended period of time, instead choosing to wander the world. Famously, on the night of April 29, 1952, aged 60, he sailed a home-made raft out of Darwin. The journey lasted 16 days until he collided with a reef off the coast of Timor. In 1953, he settled on Bribie Island, near Brisbane, where the reclusive artist spent the last two decades of his life in a self- constructed hut.
While you’re there see: Intimate Imaginaries, a group exhibition featuring artists who work out of Arts Project Australia, a gallery and studio that supports artists with intellectual disabilities and which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.
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