Carving out a pictorial history

SIX years’ worth of wood-carved illustrations from colonial newspaper The News Letter of Australasia have been curated and published by a Sebastopol local.

Peter Barwood has collated new book The Illustrators’ Artistry, and said he was inspired to share the collection of drawings when he came across a picture from the newsletter’s 61st issue.

“One of the front pages of the newspaper… showed a gold escort leaving Sandhurst, now called Bendigo,” he said.

“It really caught my eye, so I wanted to bring to the public’s notice the work of the artists who did these pictures.

“Once these pictures were drawn, they had to cut into a piece of wood to distinguish clouds, water, a face, whatever. This lithograph process of engraving, it opened up the world for people getting stories in detail.”

The Illustrators’ Artistry contains more than 70 of the newspaper’s drawings between 1856 and 1862 as well as background on 10 artists, with one written by Barwood.

Much of the research and collating was undertaken through browsing the collections of Australia’s state libraries, as well as a copy of The dictionary of Australian artists loaned from the Eureka Centre.

Barwood also contacted the Boorowa and District Historical Society in New South Wales in crafting his short biography on artist Warwick Pett.

The book launched earlier this month at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, and can be found at the Ballaarat Mechanic’s Institute, the Eureka Centre and Ballarat Libraries.

Barwood is shopping the book around at stores and schools throughout the city and said he’s proud to see it complete.

“It’s a bit like the birth of a child. It’s been a long time in the making but it’s satisfying now to see it in hard copy,” he said.

“It’s going to be on many bookshelves for some considerable time. This isn’t something that everyone decides to do at my age, 91, but I just caught the bug and ran with it.”