Corroboree at Newcastle


Corroboree at Newcastle is in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. This is the first known European oil painting to depict a night corroboree by Australian Aborigines.

Description

Joseph Lycett was the first convict artist to broadly depict the transformation of the Australian colony into a free settlement. Some of Lycett's most effective paintings were night scenes like this one featuring Awabakal men at Newcastle. In this imagined scene Aborigines perform campfire ceremonies on the banks of the Hunter River surrounded by casuarinas and mangroves, with distant Nobby's Island and the European signal station lit up by the full moon. Lycett has depicted a number of indigenous activities in different parts of the canvas. In one a tooth evulsion is taking place while under a tree a group of men are gathered around a fire sharing a clay pipe.
James Gleeson, who attributed this painting to Captain James Wallis of the 46th Regiment, interpreted the scene by the large gum tree to the right as a woman being beaten for intruding on an all-male ceremony.

Historical information

presented to the State Library of New South Wales by Sir William Dixson, 1938. Probably purchased by A H Spencer, Hill of Content Bookshop, from the Museum Book Store, London, 19 August 1937, purchased by William Dixson, 1937.

Location history