Ethnography

Image 19 of 69
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"A New South Wales native sticking fish while his wife is employed fishing with hooks and lines in her canoe"

Artist: Port Jackson Painter
Created: [between 1788 and 1797]
Dimensions: 20 x 30.5 cm
Reference: Watling Drawing - no. 29

 

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Harbour scene, with an aboriginal man fishing from the shore while a woman fishes from a canoe. The man stands to the left of the composition behind pale yellow and grey rocks in the foreground. He is depicted in right profile wading through the water and raising a four-pronged fishing spear and a throwing stick in his right hand. His feet and ankles, coloured paler than the rest of his body, are visible beneath the surface of the water, which is indicated by grey ripples. Behind him in the mid-distance to the left a woman paddles a canoe in front of a grey-green wooded headland. To the right, the open sea is represented by a gradated wash of pale bue through yellow to blue again, overlaid with short grey horizontal lines in the foreground and a grey line on the horizon. Two fishes are visible through the water. The sky is represented by a gradated wash of blue through yellow to pink on the horizon. The drawing is framed by a single-banded border outlined in ink, and annotated below the border in brown ink.

 

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