Common or Weedy Seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus, by Ludwig Becker, 14 December 1858.
Source: Museum Victoria
Art and science collide in Colonial Victoria.
Wednesday 16 August saw the presentation of the 2006 Crosbie Morrison Memorial Lecture, at Melbourne Museum’s Age Theatre.
Presented by Mr John Kean, Caught & Coloured: Zoological Illustrations from Colonial Victoria considered the intimately entwined relationship between the visual arts and science during Australia’s colonial period, examining the careers and fates of key scientists, artists and ethnographers of the period.
In the 19th century, artists Ludwig Becker and William Blandowski were drawn to Victoria by the gold rush, before making fateful expeditions into the desert to illustrate fauna still new to European eyes.
Remaining in his laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Museum Director Professor Frederick McCoy described and commissioned images of species then new to science. As debate raged over Charles Darwin’s new ideas, McCoy oversaw the publication of an ambitious zoology of Victoria - illustrated, written and printed in the thriving Melbourne of the 1880s.
Incorporating historical readings by acclaimed actor Robert Menzies, the lecture brought to colourful life the observations of the naturalists who established an independent scientific practice in the colony of Victoria.
The evening also saw the associated launch of Museum Victoria's exciting new website.
Caught & Coloured: Zoological Illustrations from Colonial Victoria features over a thousand images (many reproduced for the first time), interactive elements, specially-recorded audio and accompanying commentary.
The result of the expertise and commitment of museum staff, volunteers, creative practitioners, historians and scientists, Caught & Coloured was conceived by John Kean as recipient of Museum Victoria's Science and Humanities Fellowship 2004, funded by the Thomas Ramsay Trust Fund.