ABOUT THE PUBLICATION / EDITOR / ARTIST

Gracius J. BROINOWSKI (1837–1913)

Gracius Broinowski  was born in Poland in 1837, the son of a landowner and military officer of the Polish nobility. To avoid conscription to the Russian Imperial Army he roamed Europe in poverty, his possessions having been stolen earlier when in Germany. Hearing tales of the Australian goldfields he boarded a windjammer bound for Victoria as a deckhand. Broinowski swam ashore at Portland in Victoria in 1857, aged 20. For seven years Broinowski walked from one rural settlement to another working as a shepherd, stockman and independent farmer.

In 1864, Broinowski married in Melbourne and found work with the print sellers and publishers, Hamel & Ferguson. However, painting was his first love and for the next 10 to 15 years he travelled the length and breadth of the east coast of Australia exhibiting paintings of towns and the countryside he visited, sometimes using the pseudonyms Gracius C. Brown or Gracius J. Browne. Between the years of 1878 and 1881 he was listed as a resident Sydney artist, even though his family resided in Melbourne. He finally moved the family to Sydney in 1882, where he taught painting privately at various boys’ schools.

Broinowski published The Birds and Mammals of Australia, in 1884, followed by The Cockatoos and Nestors of Australia and New Zealand in 1888, but his greatest achievement was The Birds of Australia finalised in 1891 which was commissioned by the Department of Public Instruction in New South Wales. It was published in six volumes from 1887 - 1891 with 303 full page illustrations lithographed in colour with notes on over 700 species. Limited to 1000 copies the edition sold out quickly. As in John Gould's Birds of Australia, some New Zealand birds were also featured.

Broinowski died in 1913 at the age of 76, in Mosman, NSW and was survived by his wife, a daughter and six sons.