Historically, specific events and characteristics made the arts and cultural sector in Australia distinctive. As a small yet dispersed settler society, colonial Australia lacked an esteemed aristocracy and social hierarchy that set the terms of cultural engagement, despite the best efforts of the self-appointed arbiters of taste. The nature of Australian culture was contested. While some yearned for a re-located English culture, others — especially ex-convicts and free settlers — were intent on establishing a non-aristocratic sense of social manners and cultural mores. Indicatively, the first painting purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1896, Evicted, by British artist Blandford Fletcher, is described as ‘a good example of Victorian social realism’ (Queensland Art Gallery 1982:13, 48). It depicted a downcast mother and child unable to pay the rent being cast out of their home watched by neighbours and an unsympathetic landlord. The choice of this painting suggests that, even then, social comment and criticism was considered an important component of the cultural landscape even by the fine art sector.

As early as 1818 the fledgling colony anointed its first poet laureate, Michael Massey Robinson, albeit ‘somewhat mockingly’ according to Radbourne (1996: 12). Massey Robinson was a convict whose legal training and literary skills resulted in an early pardon. Despite his criminal background, he became registrar of all legal documents in the colony, a position with considerable benefits and autonomy (Throsby 2001; Clarke 1967). Clearly, the colony was in need of all the administrative skills it could get. As well as possessing legal skills, Robinson had a literary bent that he expressed in odes and poems. These idiosyncratic reflections became the first published literary works in Australia. In 1819, he was rewarded for his services with the gift of two cows. He is, therefore, credited with being the ‘first recipient of an arts grant’ in Australia (Throsby 2001).

The tale is also revealing in the fact that this status was granted by the colony’s Governor Macquarie and not the English monarch. Equally, it was rescinded by his successor, Governor Brisbane. While most of Robinson’s poems commemorated royal birthdays and milestones, he also wrote politically inflammatory poems and ballads (for which he was sentenced to Norfolk Island at one point) as well as poems that captured popular sentiments ‘of what it meant to be a convict, and … the ardent community spirit which informed Macquarie’s Sydney’ (Clarke 1967). In short, Robinson arguably set the tone of colonial cultural taste and reflected its desire to assert independence from the English heritage that had established the penal colony and shaped its early civilian character.

While this monograph cannot cover the scope of emerging cultural policy before Federation, it is clear that, beyond the struggle to establish the ‘nuts and bolts’ of a viable settlement, a considerable amount of energy was spent establishing the connotations of a ‘civilised’ society through clothing habits, domestic décor, furnishings, uniforms, the acquisition and production of artworks, and so on (see Maynard 1995). There was a profound ambivalence to this quest for civility evidenced by a reverence for the culture of Europe on the one hand and a heartfelt desire to be freed from the shackles of cultural elitism on the other. Perhaps inevitably, this produced a sense of ‘cultural cringe’ — embarrassment about nascent national culture — a sentiment that persists in some quarters today.

Nonetheless, colonial governments did support culture, for example, by establishing state art galleries (the first in Victoria in 1861 followed by New South Wales in 1871, South Australia in 1880, Queensland in 1895, Tasmania in 1887 and Western Australia in 1901). These galleries were given modest annual funds to operate and commence their collections (£550 for the Queensland Art Gallery, £1000 for the Art Gallery of Western Australia and £4000 for the Art Gallery of NSW), bolstered by private benefactions. By the 1950s, annual government support had increased significantly — to £22,000 for the Art Galleries of South Australia and Tasmania respectively, £46,000 to the Art Gallery of NSW and £70,000 to the National Gallery of Victoria (Throsby 2001).