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'The claim disputed', c1852

This is a watercolour, measuring 19.4 cm x 25.4 cm, by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows a well-dressed man - presumably the Gold Commissioner - arbitrating a dispute over a claim involving three diggers, probably on the Victorian gold fields. Two of the diggers are in animated discussion ...

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Concert room at Ballarat, 1855

This is a watercolour, measuring 22.8 cm x 31.9 cm, by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows Charles Thatcher (1831-78), a comic singer well known on the gold fields, performing popular songs on stage at the Charlie Napier Hotel in Ballarat with a female accompanist. The painting has the artist's ...

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Using a pedal wireless transmitter

This is a photograph, possibly taken by John Flynn (1880-1951) and measuring 8.2 cm x 8.2 cm, of an elderly woman seated at a pedal wireless transmitter with three girls behind her. There is no microphone but the woman is operating a morse key. The woman and one of the girls are wearing earphones. The words 'AIM Pedal Transmitter' ...

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Morning at Passchendaele, 1917

This is a black-and-white composite photograph, taken by Frank Hurley on the morning after the first battle of Passchendaele during the First World War, showing Australian infantry survivors laying out and placing blankets over dead soldiers around a blockhouse near the site of Zonnebeke Railway Station in Belgium on 12 ...

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Yoshitomo Nara: nobody's fool

This is a website introducing the exhibition, 'Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's fool' (2010-11, USA) featuring artworks by the Japanese pop artist. Information about the exhibition is organised under three headings: Isolation, Rebellion and Music. Also included are images and information about Nara's installations (including a ...

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'Old Negro (former slave) with horn with which slaves were called', 1939

This is a black-and-white photograph showing an old African American man sitting in a doorway and holding a horn once used to summon slaves to work at sunrise. The photograph was taken near Marshall in Texas, USA, by photographer Russell Lee.

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'Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint', 1939

This is a black-and-white photograph showing African Americans at a roadside dance hall outside Clarksdale in Mississippi, USA, one Saturday evening in November 1939. Couples are jitterbugging to music from a jukebox while other people, mostly men, are standing around. The photograph was taken by Marion Post Wolcott.

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'Migrant mother', 1936

This is one of the most famous photographs of the Great Depression in the USA. It shows Florence Owens Thompson aged 32 huddled together with three of her seven children (the baby is obscured). The family as a whole are described in the Library of Congress catalogue as 'migrant' (ie itinerant) pea pickers in California ...

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'Washington, DC Government charwoman', 1942

This is a famous black-and-white anti-discrimination photograph, also widely known as 'American Gothic, Washington, DC'. It shows Mrs Ella Watson, an African American cleaner at the Treasury in Washington, USA. She is standing stiffly in front of the US flag, with a broom on one side and a mop on the other. The photograph ...

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Thornhill plantation house, 2010

This is the two-storey Thornhill plantation house in Greene County, Alabama, showing the southern facade with its two-story portico of six Ionic columns across the front, and the eastern-side elevation. The photograph was taken by Carol Highsmith.

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'The abolition of the slave trade', 1792

This is a hand-coloured cartoon print showing an African girl being hoisted by the ankle for a flogging on board the British slaving vessel Recovery. The vessel's captain John Kimber is seen on the left, whip in hand. The cartoon was drawn by Isaac Cruikshank and published by S W Fores in London on 10 April 1792. The alternative ...

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Slaves exposed for sale

This is a black-and-white engraving showing a group of near-naked African men, women and children next to a smaller group of European men who appear to be discussing them, perhaps negotiating their sale. One African man is depicted with a chain around his neck, which bears a name or number on a metal plate. The scene appears ...

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'Am I not a man and a brother?', 1837

This is a black-and-white illustration of a kneeling male slave in chains. It appeared on a broadside (a poster, often with a poem or news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations) published in New York. The broadside also featured John Greenleaf Whittier's anti-slavery poem, 'Our countrymen in chains' and two quotations, ...

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'Slavery as it exists in America. Slavery as it exists in England', 1850

This is a black-and-white print showing two contrasting scenes of 'slavery' produced by J Haven of Boston, USA. The top scene shows African American slaves in the US southern states dancing and playing the banjo after their day's work is over. The bottom scene shows four episodes of people lamenting the 'slavery' of work ...

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'The parting - "Buy us too"', 1863

This is a colour lithographic card showing a shackled slave being taken away by his new owner as his wife and child beg to be bought as well so the family would not be separated. The owner gestures them away with his whip. The card was the fourth in a collectable series of 12 album cards entitled 'The slave in 1863. A thrilling ...

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Sketch of a slave cabin in Virginia, 1864

This is a black-and-white sketch showing a slave cabin with a small girl standing in front. The handwritten caption reads 'Slave Cabin near the Long Bridge, Chicahominy River, Va [Virginia], June 13th 1864'. The artist was Edwin Forbes and elsewhere on the drawing he noted, 'Sketched while on the march from Long Bridge ...

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'Effects of the Fugitive-Slave-Law', 1850

This is a black-and-white print showing four African Americans attacked in an ambush by six armed white men. One of the white men is firing as two others reload their guns, and two of the African Americans have been hit. The print is a denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, its effect reinforced by two quotations ...

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Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing

This is a very rich resource for students from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), which gives them an insight into the art of Shaun Tan through a focus on both the book and the film of The Lost Thing. The content focuses on aspects of storytelling, including themes, techniques, forms and language, visual, ...

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Dame Nellie Melba in a procession at Lilydale, 1902

This is a black-and-white photograph that shows the arrival of operatic soprano Nellie Melba (1861-1931) in a procession at Lilydale in Victoria during her 1902 tour of Australia and New Zealand. Melba is seated in a buggy at the front of the procession. The procession, which is made up of people in buggies and men on horseback, ...

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Touring possible sites for the federal capital, 1902

This is a black-and-white photograph, measuring 18.8 cm x 24.0 cm, taken in 1902 during a tour of inspection by senators from the Federal Parliament of possible sites for the proposed federal capital. Having alighted from a horse-drawn stage coach, five members of the party en route to Tumut, New South Wales, are standing ...