The National Gallery Of Victoria

Mrs Kobold and I were away in Melbourne this past weekend, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. As is our wont when away on holiday we mostly did museums and galleries, and since we'd never been to Melbourne before we found ourselves with a whole city's worth of places to explore.

Naturally I took some pictures of things I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog. This post will mostly cover the National Gallery of Victoria; I have a second lot of pictures from the Melbourne Museum to sort through as well*

First up are these rather nice pictures of ships by Jyūnisen zu, painted in Japan c1720. They're part of a collection called Twelve Ships, but the museum only displays three of them

Continuing the naval theme, there is this painting in the 19th Century Salon gallery. The Salon is an awesome 'slap all the pictures on all the walls' gallery, with the downside that some of them, like this one, are too high up for you to really see what's going on. Fortunately there's an electronic guide you can use to locate paintings, and see what they're about. The guide told me that this picture is by Norwegian artist Johan Benneter, and was painted in 1876. It shows an action in 1799 off Madagascar where the ship of the line HMS Jupiter fought an inconclusive action with the French frigate Preneuse. Rough seas prevented Jupiter from deploying its lower-deck guns.

Continuing the nautical theme we have this one, showing Ulysses and the Sirens, painted in 1891 by J.W. Waterhouse. I'm a bit of a fan of Pre-Raphaelite art (mostly from an early exposure to the incredible collection in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery when I was growing up), and I'd not seen this one before.

The sirens are beautifully rendered, as is the ship, so it's full of good things. I love the siren bottom left in this picture, harassing the poor crewman.

Every gallery should have a grand battle painting, and the NGV is no exception. I give you 'The 28th Regiment At Quatre Bras', painted by Elizabeth Thompson (later Lady Butler)

Take that, Polish lancer!

And that, French cuirassier!

We found this (unexpectedly) in the State Library - Ned Kelly's armour. 

Bullet holes and everything!

Once I get them sorted I'll post the pictures from Melbourne Museum as well.

*I actually have some pictures from our trip to the Northern Territory in October 2022 to post here too; one day I'll get around to them ...