The story
One painting at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart carries a heavy piece of the island's history. The Conciliation, painted in 1840 by the English-born artist Benjamin Duterrau, shows George Augustus Robinson, the colonial official styled Protector of the Aborigines, surrounded by Tasmanian Aboriginal people. It is often called the first history painting made in the Australian colonies, and it presents as gentle persuasion the campaign that ended with Aboriginal Tasmanians being removed to Flinders Island.
The museum is among the oldest in Australia. The Royal Society of Tasmania founded it in 1848, and its main building by the architect Henry Hunter dates from the early 1860s. The site has since absorbed its neighbours, including the Commissariat Store of 1810, among the oldest surviving buildings in Hobart, and the Customs House of 1902.
It is a mixed museum, with natural history and Tasmanian Aboriginal culture alongside the art. Among the European pictures is Psyche and Cupid of 1889 by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a life-size canvas of Cupid carrying Psyche up into the air.
