In early colonial art the aboriginals were portrayed as a 'noble savage'.
Clad in old rags to hide their nakedness from the eyes of the Europeans the Aboriginals became, during the 1820s and 1830s, the butt of a cruel and insensitive colonial humour. The colonial artists drew Aboriginal people with large odd shaped mouths and big lips portraying them as some kind of deformed animal.
For the great majority of the colonists the Aboriginals represented the lowest condition of human existence. …
