The history of Tasmania begins at the end of the most recent ice age when it is believed that the island was joined to the Australian mainland. Little is known of the human history of the island until the British colonisation in the 19th century.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter was a German painter and lithographer, known for his flattering portraits of royalty and upper-class society in the mid-19th century. His name has become associated with fashionable court portraiture. Among his best known works are Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855) and the portraits he made of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865).
Thomas Bock was an English-Australian artist and an early adopter of photography in Australia. Born in England he was sentenced to transportation in 1823. After gaining his freedom he set himself up as one of Australia's first professional artists and became well known for his portraits of colonists. As early as 1843 he began taking daguerreotypes in Hobart and became one of the earliest commercial photographers in Australia.
Augustus Earle (1793–1838) was a British painter. Unlike earlier artists who worked outside Europe and were employed on voyages of exploration or worked abroad for wealthy, often aristocratic patrons, Earle was able to operate quite independently - able to combine his lust for travel with an ability to earn a living through art. The body of work he produced during his travels comprises a significant documentary record of the effects of European contact and colonisation during the early nineteenth century.
John Skinner Prout was a British painter, writer, lithographer and art teacher who worked in Australia in the 1840s.
William Strutt RBA, FZS was an English artist.
Whaling in Australian waters began in 1791 when five of the 11 ships in the Third Fleet landed their passengers and freight at Sydney Cove and then left Port Jackson to engage in whaling and seal hunting off the coast of Australia and New Zealand. The two main species hunted by such vessels in the early years were right and sperm whales. Humpback, bowhead and other whale species would later be taken.
James Kelly (1791–1859), Australian mariner, explorer and port official, was born on 24 December 1791 at Parramatta, New South Wales. He was probably the son of James Kelly, a cook in the convict transport Queen, and Catherine Devereaux, a convict transported for life from Dublin in the same ship.
William Charles Piguenit was an Australian landscape painter.
Knud Geelmuyden Bull was a Norwegian painter and counterfeiter. He studied as a painter, was convicted for printing false bank notes, and was deported from the United Kingdom to Australia during 1846. He lived in Australia the remainder of his life, becoming a significant artistic painter there.
Gother Victor Fyers Mann, also known as G. V. F. Mann, was an Australian architect, painter and Gallery Director.
Sir John George Davies, generally known as (Sir) George Davies, was a Tasmanian politician, newspaper proprietor and first-class cricketer.
William Buelow Gould was an English and Van Diemonian (Tasmanian) painter. He was transported to Australia as a convict in 1827, after which he would become one of the most important early artists in the colony, despite never really separating himself from his life of crime.
Henry Beresford Garrett was a habitual criminal who served prison sentences in England, Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand. Born Henry Rouse, he used a number of aliases including 'Long Harry' and Henry Beresford Garrett.
Major General Henry Despard was a British Army officer of the 17th Regiment of Foot (1799–1838), Staff of Ireland (1838–1842) and 99th Regiment of Foot (1842–1854). He saw action in Third Anglo-Maratha War in India and, in his later years, in the Flagstaff, or Northern, War in New Zealand. In 1845 he commanded British troops in a disastrous assault on the Māori pā at Ōhaeawai.
Philip Tennyson Cole, generally known as Tennyson Cole, was an English society portrait painter in both oils and watercolours, who first achieved fame in Australasia and South Africa.
Florence Aline Rodway was an Australian artist best known for her portraits. Born in the Tasmanian city of Hobart, she was the second of six children to Leonard Rodway and Louisa Susan, née Phillips. She studied painting at the Hobart Technical College ; after two years her work was sent to London, and she was awarded a three-year scholarship to study painting at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She is best known for having painted portraits of notable figures in Australian history, including Dame Nellie Melba, William Bridges, J. F. Archibald and Henry Lawson.
The Giblin family of Tasmania was an influential family in the early days of the colony of Tasmania, or Van Diemen's Land as it was earlier named. The list below is not exhaustive, but should help in establishing relationships between family members encountered in histories and elsewhere in Wikipedia.
Lucy Ann(e) was built in Canada early in the 19th century and was brought to Australia in 1827. She was first employed as a trading vessel before purchase by the New South Wales government in 1828. In government service the ship was used to help establish a number of new coastal settlements. She was also used to transport descendants of the Bounty mutineers from Pitcairn Island to Tahiti in 1830.
Hemi Pomara was a Māori man of chiefly status, from the Chatham Islands. In his youth, he was taken to Sydney, and then London, before returning to New Zealand, via Barbados, where he was shipwrecked. A daguerreotype of Pomara is the oldest known photograph of any Māori person. A novel and a planned film are based on his life.
