Person

Bartholomew, Arthur (1833 - 1909)

Born
1 December 1833
Bruton, Somerset, United Kingdom
Died
19 August 1909
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Zoological artist

Summary

Arthur Bartholomew was an artist who trained as an engraver and lithographer before coming to Australia in 1852. During his early years in Australia he spent some time in Tasmania, and assisted William Blandowski in preparing illustrations for his encyclopaedia of Australia's natural history. In 1859 Bartholomew was appointed to the Department of Natural History at the University of Melbourne. As Assistant to Frederick McCoy, Professor of Natural History, Bartholomew attended lectures, and assisted in the laboratory. He also, over the next 40 years, produced more than 700 illustrations of zoological specimens, as well of palaeontological and geological specimens. Many of these were published in McCoy's major iconographic works, the Prodromus of the zoology of Victoria (1885 - 1890) and the Prodromus of the palaeontology of Victoria (1874 - 1882), with Bartholomew transferring his own illustrations, and those of other artists, into lithographs. His work was noted for his attention to detail and technical skill. He retired from the University in 1899.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

December 1852
Life event - Arrived in Melbourne
September 1859
Career event - Appointed Attendant, Department of Natural History, University of Melbourne
1899
Life event - Retired

Related Corporate Bodies

Related People

  • McCoy, Frederick (1817 - 1899)

    Illustrated McCoy's Prodromus of the zoology of Victoria (1885 - 1890) and the Prodromus of the palaeontology of Victoria (1874 - 1882)

Published resources

Books

  • McCoy, Frederick, Prodromus of the zoology of Victoria, or, figures and descriptions of the living species of all classes of the Victorian indigenous animals, 2 vols (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1885-1890). Details

Resources

See also

  • McCoy, Frederick, Prodromus of the palaeontology of Victoria : or, the figures and descriptions of Victorian organic remains, 7 vols (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1874-1882). Details

Helen Cohn

Created: 23 June 2026

EOAS ID: biogs/P008076b.htm

This Edition: 2026 August - Bibliographies
Larneuk - Gariwerd calendar - Pre-spring: late July to August - season of nesting birds
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-larneuk-season-of-nesting-birds

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P008076b.htm

For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260