Crouch Gallery - Australian Art 1880 to 1920

This room shows works of art from the Boom era of the 1880s into the eras of the Boer and First World Wars, Federation, the White Australia Policy and women's suffrage. The artists represented here were the first to realistically and sensitively depict the Australian landscape as well as Australia's developing urban culture.

The Art Gallery of Ballarat was one of the few regional galleries to flourish as the gold boom declined, as the world went to war, and while the second generation of Gallery supporters took the reins.

This room was part of a 1920s extension that doubled the size of the Gallery. The room is named after the Honourable Colonel Richard Crouch, a Ballarat-born soldier, politician and benefactor of the Gallery, who set up one of the first contemporary art prizes in the country. For 50 years the Crouch Prize made the Art Gallery of Ballarat a national focus for visual arts.