Reviewed by Sasha Grishin.

‘History painting’ - as a term used to describe paintings whose subject matter was drawn from classical mythology, classical history or the Bible - was the invention of the 17th century, which by the 18th century was extended to cover more recent historical subjects.

In the academic tradition, it was the highest form of art, superior to genre painting, portraiture or landscape art, and in Britain the early 19th century it became popular as a means through which the public could experience its overseas empire.

Benjamin Duterrau (1768 –1851) was an obscure English painter from Soho in London, who emigrated with his daughter to Van Diemen’s Land at the age of 64 and established a business as an academic artist.

In the almost 19 years that Duterrau spent in Tasmania, he painted the first history painting, made the first etchings and sculptures, and delivered the first lectures on art appreciation.

Despite all of these firsts, his art compares poorly with his exact contemporary in the colony, John Glover, who also arrived at 64 and produced some of the most compelling paintings of the Tasmanian landscape.

However, Glover as the ‘English Claude’ was a much higher calibre of artist, with a controversial English reputation and a troubled relationship with high society, both in England and in Tasmania.

Duterrau’s daughter became the governess to the children of Sir George Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor, and her father’s portrait painting business prospered. Although discerning clients may have preferred the more accomplished portraits by Thomas Bock, who also had his studio in Campbell Street in Hobart, Duterrau had found his academic niche within the local high society.

This exhibition deals with Duterrau’s most famous painting, The conciliation, 1840, which - despite its awkwardness in composition and execution - as Australia’s earliest history painting, has a special place in the hearts of art historians and art curators.

It is a ‘dog of a painting’ and were it not for its tragic subject matter could be seen as comic with the clumsy mixture of Indigenous people and animals surrounding a Christ-like representation of the ‘Protector of the Aborigines’, George Augustus Robinson.

Robinson saw his mission to roundup and deport the Indigenous people as a humane act. He wrote, “history does not furnish an instance where the whole nation has been removed by so mild and humane a policy.” One of the curators of this exhibition, Greg Lehman, may describe it as “the kindest genocide ever conceived”, but it was deadly effective as a population of about 6000 was reduced to a few hundred.

Although the famous pictograms of Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aboriginal people 1829-30 may have implied that British law treated all peoples equally, in reality, British law in Van Diemen’s Land was thinly disguised genocide. If Aboriginal people entered a settled area they could be, and were, shot on sight, Aboriginal women were raped, children were stolen and disease decimated their population.

The costly and ill-conceived Black Line in 1830, designed to drive the surviving Aboriginal people off their land and onto offshore islands, failed but within a short period of time British officials with a degree of sanctimonious malice spoke of the inevitability of the extinction of this race.

Although this exhibition repeats much of what was already shown in the Carl Andrew and Don Gregg epic exhibition The Tasmanian Aboriginal in Art at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart in 1976, subsequently shown in Launceston, it is important for each generation to revisit Australia’s black history.

The inclusion of Julie Gough’s profound response to the Tasmanian genocide is a wonderful addition and other gems include the assembly of all of the known surviving Governor Arthur pictograms in Australian collections.

Whereas the Tasmanian show was accompanied by a flimsy 24-page catalogue, the Canberra show has a substantial 250-page scholarly book. This is not a pretty show and is best seen on an empty stomach, but it is an exhibition that should be seen and remembered.