JOSEPH BRENNAN takes an admiring glance at an important regional gallery which bears the stamp of its Victorian beginnings.

It was 1884, in the decade of the Victorian land boom and the Heidelberg School, that Australia’s first regional gallery opened in Ballarat. This came just two decades after Australia’s first public art gallery - the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) - opened, and little more than a generation after the gold rush, which made Ballarat, however briefly, the most prosperous city in Victoria. When it opened its doors, Ballarat became the first regional gallery to be built in the overseas dominions of the British Empire.

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Images:

Top: Thomas Flintoff, Henry F. Stone and his Durham ox, 1887, oil on canvas, 82.5 x 122.9cm. Courtesy Art Gallery of Ballarat.

Bottom: Solomon J Solomon, Ajax and Cassandra, 1886, oil on canvas, 304.5 x 152.5cm. Courtesy Art Gallery Ballarat.