School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemEugene von Guerard and the science of landscape painting( 2007)Eugene von Guerard (1811-1901) is regarded as one of Australia's most important nineteenth century landscape painters. He was forty one when he arrived in Australia in 1852. His training, his contact with artists in Rome, Naples and Dusseldorf and his engagement with contemporary scientific thought in Europe shaped his response to the Australian landscape. In this thesis von Guerard's origins in Vienna and the role played by his artist-father in his early art practice are explored. The reconstruction of von Guerard's early life in Europe is based on the artist's sketchbooks and unpublished oil sketches. His training under Bassi in Rome (1830-32), his immersion in the German community of artists there, the significance of the Nazarene painters and the influence of Joseph Anton Koch for his career are examined. In Naples, where von Guerard lived and worked for six years, he painted with Pitloo and the School of Posillipo, he was introduced to Hackert's work and ideas and he undertook an extensive Sicilian expedition recorded in the sketchbooks of both father and son. In Naples von Guerard's interest in volcanic geology was ignited. Following the death of his father in 1836 von Guerard arrived in Dusseldorf 1838 where he studied landscape painting under Schirmer and Lessing, participating in their open air painting expeditions to the Neander Valley and the Eifel. He made studies volcanic phenomena in the Eifel, an important site for the emerging science of geognosy. In Dusseldorf he was exposed to the ideas of Humboldt and Carus, took sketching expeditions along the Rhine, met his future wife Louise Arnz and was a founding member of the Kunstlerverein Malkasten. An examination of the landscape paintings and lithographs that he produced during the almost thirty years he spent in Australia (1852-1882) indicates that Humboldt's ideas were the enduring imperative for von Guerard's journey to Australia. In a series of case studies von Guerard's career as a Humboldtian Reisekunstler is explored. Von Guerard's scientific interests were nurtured in mid-century Melbourne by the community of eminent German scientists resident there. His expedition to Kosciuszko with the eminent geophysicist, Georg von Neumayer, epitomized Carus's ideal of the complementary relationship between art and science. His interpretation of the volcanic Western District, prior to government geological surveys, was informed by his studies of parallel phenomena in Germany's Eifel region. In Victoria's fern gullies and the sub tropical rain forest of New South Wales von Guerard portrayed plant species from Humboldt's sixteen Urpflanzen in their natural groupings and environmental context. His album, Eugene von Guerard's Australian Landscapes, was recognized by the geologist of Novara expedition fame, Ferdinand von Hochstetter in Vienna in 1870 for its geological and botanical content. Carus and Humboldt looked for a poetic response to nature, one that would communicate a sense of the inner life of the subject and this von Guerard achieved through the sensitivity of his touch, the honesty of his response to nature and the compositional geometry of his works, works that brought Humboldt's vision of unity and interconnectedness to the Australian landscape.
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ItemObject lessons: public history in Melbourne 1887-1935( 2000-05)The thesis studies history-making in Melbourne’s central civic sphere, from its emergence in the 1880s to its decline in the 1930s. It identifies public history’s major themes and forms, and the relationships between them, based on four main cases of history-making: the articulation of the past and history in Melbourne’s 1888 Centennial International Exhibition; the historical backgrounds, development, unveilings and partial after-lives of Sir Redmond Barry’s statue, unveiled in Swanston Street in 1887, and the Eight Hours’ Day monument, unveiled in Carpentaria Place in 1903; and history-making around Victoria’s 1934-1935 Centenary Celebrations, with special emphasis on the Shrine of Remembrance and a detailed study of Cooks’ Cottage.
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ItemDrawing a line: the colonial genesis of the Hume highway( 2006)The colonial archives of the Hume Highway return to an inception narrative containing tropes of intrusion and conflict. In Chapter One a survey of the maps and literature relating to the 1824/5 expedition leads to a discussion of these tropes. The first of these, 'intrusion', concerns the process through which Aboriginal place was first reconfigured as colonial space. Beginning with Hamilton Hume's act of 'drawing a line' through the blank space of a government supplied skeleton chart, this act of intrusion was rapidly followed by the expedition party's penetration into the Aboriginal countries of south-eastern Australia. The second trope, 'tug of war', concerns the rivalry between Hovell, a British free settler, and Hume, a first-generation Australian. Throughout the 1824/5 expedition differences between the two men smouldered, before erupting in controversy in 1855 when Hume published his vitriolic pamphlet Facts. By placing the expedition and these men in their colonial context, Chapter One draws parallels between this conflict and class tensions within the Australian colonies during the same period. Such information enables the reader to appreciate the inception narrative of Chapter Two. How the expedition party made the road during their three and a half month expedition is recreated by drawing from associated exploration texts. By contrasting the explorers' distinct attitudes to the land and the Aborigines, the relationship between the two tropes also becomes evident. As the two men walked the road, so they would write it. Chapter Three examines the key moments and motivations of their controversy. With the publication of Facts 1 in 1855 Hume reasserted his authority over a road since inscribed with the regular traversings of settlement and gold traffic. In doing so, Hume also drew a line through the name of Hovell and ensured that the line in the skeleton chart eventually became known as the Hume Highway.