Terms and conditions of use
Swanston Street from the Bridge
1861
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 71.8 × 92.2 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- Melbourne, Victoria
- Inscription
- inscribed in brown paint l.l.: Henry Burn 1861.
- Accession Number
- 754-2
- Department
- Australian Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of John H. Connell, 1914
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Vizard Foundation - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
The riches of the gold rush bankrolled the development of Victoria, and the Museum of Art was also the beneficiary of this flush of riches pulled from the ground. Henry Burn’s scenic picture of Swanston Street gives charming insight into Melbourne in 1861, the year the Gallery was founded. Here is a city on the rise. The hotel on the corner will later become Young & Jackson’s; St Paul’s Church will be transformed into St Paul’s Cathedral; tombstones on the site of the coroner’s office are spaced across the area that we now know as Federation Square that, at the time, also backed onto the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, from where the bride and groom in the carriage have presumably just come; and the wide expanse of Swanston Street bustles with a burgeoning population of Melbournians – and their little dogs.
- Subjects (general)
- Cityscapes Daily Life Travel
- Subjects (specific)
- Australia (nation) carriages (vehicles) cathedrals (works by context) equestrians Melbourne (inhabited place) pedestrians street scenes Victoria (state)
- Frame
- Original, maker unknown, surface not original
