An overdue appreciation of ST Gill, Australia’s first painter of modern life

A new exhibition about Australia's quintessential colonial artist opens this week at the State Library of Victoria.
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ST Gill’s Diggers on the way to Bendigo, 1869. Watercolour, from the collection of the State Library of Victoria

ST Gill may be the quintessential Australian colonial artist, known to anyone who has been educated in Australia and seen textbooks on Australian history full of Gill illustrations of the gold rushes, yet he has never been the subject of a comprehensive retrospective exhibition. At least, not until now.

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Sasha Grishin
About the Author
Sasha Grishin is the Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History at the Australian National University.