The nineteenth-century landscape painter Eugene von Guérard was an avid collector. A series of letters held by the Ethnological Museum Berlin, translated by the authors from ‘old’ German into English, describes his personal collection of Australian Aboriginal cultural objects and its transfer, along with 64 objects acquired on consignment, to the Ethnological Department of the Berlin Museum in 1879. Complemented by the publication of the complete correspondence in a companion paper, this article contextualises the letters within von Guérard's careers as artist, curator and collector, positioning them within the framework of his travels as recorded in his sketchbooks, and in relation to specific consequential experiences and individuals, prevailing colonial narratives and European and colonial collecting agendas and networks. The letters inform, and are informed by, von Guérard’s art, collecting and professional practices, with new insights captured in the intersections between them.