Corroboree At Night, South Australia 1880
Watercolour and gouache
31 x 42.5 cm
Provenance: Private collection until 2005
A later version of this painting titled South Australian Blacks in Full War Dress 1891 is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia
Richard Hussey Shaw (1832-1895) arrived in Australia from England c1858 and settled in Adelaide. He was the son of Captain George Reynolds Shaw.
He was a watercolour and scene-painter, produced watercolour landscapes and sketches of Aborigines in South Australia. 'He exhibited his work at the Chamber of Manufactures and many local exhibitions; he also turned his brush to the production of Theatre Scenes’ – and he died in poverty at the age of sixty-three. Blacks in Full War Dress and Greenhill Road, Hazlewood Park (both undated watercolours) are in the Art Gallery of South Australia. Aborigines in a Landscape was sold at Melbourne in 1974 and Aboriginals on the Murray River (1878) at Sydney on 29 May 1989. Other oil paintings of Aborigines (possibly of the 1890s) have also appeared on the art market. refer Joan Kerr, Dictionary of Australian Artists ..to 1870, Oxford University Press, 1992, page 720
POA
Item #6929