Peddling prejudice: A Series of Twelve Profile Portraits of Aborigines of New South Wales

Abstract

This paper examines the production and market for portraits of Aborigines in early colonial New South Wales. The discussion centers on a group of prints published in Sydney in 1836 under the title A Series of Twelve Profile Portraits of Aborigines of New South Wales. Various versions of these portraits were issued over several years and it will be argued that the changes made to each successive edition increasingly pandered to the prejudices of settler society. The paper will propose that the first prints, in which the artist and the sitter had actually met, are relatively sensitive and are an example of how the Aborigines negotiated a place within colonial Sydney, even to the extent of using the print market to advance their own celebrity status. When, however, the original images were appropriated and altered by later artists, racist overtones came to the fore and we witness the harsh colonial realities of the Aborigines losing any vestiges of control over how they were depicted.