Australian Rules Football in Australian Popular Culture - Visual Arts

Visual Arts

"What I saw of it struck me as the fastest game I have ever seen. ... The science of the Victorian game of football may be too quick for a stranger to grasp at first sight, or an artist to depict with justice."

— Harry Furniss, Irish illustrator, 1888

From the earliest football matches played in Melbourne, engravings and illustrations of the on-field action and happenings in the outer became common in local newspapers and picturesque atlases including the Australasian Sketcher, the Australian Pictorial Weekly, and the Illustrated Australian News. These early artistic depictions have proven highly valuable to historians in researching the history and evolution of Australian rules football. Australian artists have continued to celebrated many aspects of football, from the game's speed, energy and dynamism, to its role as a binding force for various communities. Prominent figures of Australian rules have been the subject of finalist works in the Archibald Prize for portraiture, and portraits of the "Fathers" of Australian rules Tom Wills (by New Zealand's William Handcock, 1870) and H. C. A. Harrison (by John Longstaff, ca. 1920) hang in the National Sports Museum.

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