Short, Henry (1807-65; English)
Fish, fruit and flowers 1860
Oil on canvas, 78.0 x 98.5 cm
Gift of the artist, 1861
National Gallery of Victoria (p.301.4-1)

This was the first painting produced in Australia to enter the Melbourne collection.In the 1861 MPL catalogue, it is recorded as “Productions of Sea and Land, a painting of.”

The artist immigrated from England with his family in 1852, and exhibited his work regularly in Melbourne. Several paintings by Short have been added to the SLV collection more recently, notably his extraordinary floral tribute to Burke and Wills, Our Adopted Country: To the Memory of the Lamented Heroes of the Victorian Expedition 1861 (acquired in 1986).

Refs.

MPL catalogue 1861, p.lxii (under Donations to the Museum of Art; title given as noted above); AR 1870-71, p.188, Schedule XLIII (as acq.1861); NGV 1875, p.26; NGV 1894, p.125 (V.Buvelot Gallery, 8th bay, no.12); not listed in NGV 1905 

The NGV catalogue also provides information on the frame, made in Melbourne, 1871-72

For Short (not listed in Bénézit or AKL), see Kerr Dictionary (1992), pp.722-24 (entry by Elaine Meehan), also publ. as http://www.daao.org.au/bio/henry-short/ (including further references); and for his Burke & Wills painting, see SLV catalogue (H86.106), and SLV, The Art of the Collection (2007), p.121