kanalaritja: an unbroken string - TMAG touring exhibition

The Maireener shell necklace has been known to Europeans since their earliest visits to Van Diemen’s Land, as the island was known until 1856. Perhaps the best-known illustration of these encounters was provided by the artist Nicholas Martin Petit, travelling with Captain Nicholas Baudin in 1802. Born into a family of fan painters, Petit had been taken on as a gunner and draughtsman, but is thought to have been a student in the school of David.[1] His sensitive portrait of Bara-Ourou, jeune sauvage de la terrede Diémen, was first published in the atlas of the voyage in 1807.