George French Angas & "South Australia Illustrated" 

  George Fife Angas, aged 22, arrived in the Colony of South Australia on the barque Augustus on January 1st, 1844. The Colony was just over 8 years old and established with the financial help of his London Financier father’s business, The South Australia Company. It seemed inevitable that, as an artist, Angas Junior was drawn to this little-known part of the globe to record it’s environment & early stages of this prototype free settlement of the British Empire.  Angas Junior wasted no time & set off to inspect the this convict-free settlement by joining the expedition of Governor George Grey, the year of his arrival. The indigenous inhabitants, early buildings, colonial settlers, and intriguing landscapes were recorded. The paintings were sent back to England, after having been displayed in Adelaide and Sydney, to be sold to subscribers as hand colored lithographs for his ambitious publication, South Australia Illustrated, 1846-47. In the 21st century, we would see such an undertaking as was an incredible opportunity to "advertise" his father's investment. He, on the other hand, recorded what he saw with an artist's eager curiosity, not as prospective land owner. He was young man setting out to "make his mark" on this New World Order that the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution had/was creating.