• Title
  [Goldminer], 1861 / oil painting by J. Anderson
• Creator
  James Anderson, active 1852-1877
• Call number
  ML 1349
  Status: On display – Paintings from the Collection, Room 2, North Wall, no. 137
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  1861
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Paintings
• Reference code
  441673
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 painting - 75 x 62.8 cm. (image, sight) - oil on canvas
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  James Anderson, portrait painter and member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, emigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1852-1853. Initially he lived in Victoria where he contributed to the Victorian Fine Arts Exhibition in Melbourne in 1853 and 1854. By 1858, Anderson had moved to Sydney and continued to paint portraits advertising in the Sands Directory of Sydney for 1861. -- Reference: Dictionary of Australian artists / Joan Kerr, editor. [Sydney] : Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, 1984
• Scope and Content
  The man in this portrait is dressed in a white shirt with brown-coloured wool trousers that are tucked into leather boots that extend over the knee, and a cabbage tree hat with shallow round crown and a 'pugaree' or fly veil rolled up at the front. Draped over one arm is a red wool Crimea shirt.
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Artist died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• General note
  
  This oil painting is of an Australian bushman, or possibly a goldminer, an occupation suggested by the pick and shovel carried over the subject's left shoulder. It is an unusual painting for Anderson being a genre image rather than a formal oil portrait for which he is now mostly known. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Australian bush and gold mining life became the principal subject for popular artists such as S.T. Gill and George Lacy. The notion of Australians as sturdy independent bush types, defined by the bush experience, was beginning to take hold during this period. This oil is an early example of the subject moving from popular illustration to the more sophisticated and formal genre of oil painting.
  
  Reference:
  Curator of Pictures, June 2004
  Digital order no:a128879
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Signed and dated at lower left, "Jms. Anderson / Pinxit / 1861"
• Subject
  Art, Australian--19th century.
  Art, Colonial--New South Wales.
  
• Topic
  billies
  bushmen
  dogs
  gold miners
  miners
  slab huts
  tools
  
• Exhibited in
  
  Pride of place
  Built for the bush : the green architecture of rural Australia
  Paintings from the Collection
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE3217360

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