Australian Fiction and the Lure of Painting

Abstract

This essay investigates the prevalence of painters, as well as painting techniques and concerns, in Australian fiction from colonial to modern times. Why this should be so is explored, while painting, it is argued, has long enjoyed a special prominence in settler diaries and fiction, been embraced as revealing cognate dilemmas and aspirations shared by authors, and singled out, in short, as the chosen Sister Art of white antipodean writing.

Keywords

• australian fiction
• painting
• settler diaries
• modernism