Skip to main content
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this resource may contain images and voices of people who have died.

Alexander Schramm: 'Adelaide, a tribe of natives on the banks of the river Torrens' 1850

Posted 
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Painting titled 'Adelaide, a tribe of natives on the banks of the river Torrens' 1850, by Alexander Schramm
Alexander Schramm: 'Adelaide, a tribe of natives on the banks of the river Torrens' 1850

SUBJECTS:  Arts, History

YEARS:  5–6, 7–8, 9–10


Alexander Schramm was the leading oil painter in the colony of South Australia during the mid-19th century.

He painted portraits of colonists, but most of his creative energy was devoted to depicting the Indigenous people of South Australia with great sympathy at a time when Europeans were destroying Indigenous tribal life.

'Adelaide, a tribe of natives on the banks of the River Torrens' is Schramm's largest known painting. It shows the Kaurna people, and possibly other local people, sheltering under characteristic straggly gums in Adelaide parkland. The narrative detail in this work is striking. While most of the Indigenous people depicted are in traditional dress, a few individuals wear European cast-off clothing, an indicator of exchanges between Aboriginal and European people. The group are engaged in activities from daily life, sitting together in groups conversing, cooking over camp fires, interacting with pets (such as the young child riding a dog in the left-hand corner of the work) and climbing trees.


Acknowledgements

Video © National Gallery of Australia.


Production Date: 2015


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Posted