Aboriginal hunting kangaroos1840s

This painting of an Aboriginal man hunting kangaroos is by an unknown artist. Another version of it is owned by the National Library of Australia, while a third version was published as an illustration, Charley spearing kangaroos, in the book Frank Kennedy the Australian settler, which was published in Sydney in 1847. It is not known which version was the original.

Frank Kennedy was impressed by Charley’s bushcraft and hunting skills. As Aboriginal people become more and more remote from the experiences of largely urban colonists in the 1840s and 1850s, there seems to have been an increasing interest in paintings of customary life and traditions.