This study examines the art practices and management of the National Art Galleries of Australia and New Zealand in the period between the wars, 1918-1939.It does so in part to account for the pervading conservatism and narrow corridors of aesthetic acceptability evident in their acquisitions and in many of their dealings. It aims to explore the role of Britishness, through an examination of the influence of the London Royal Academy of Art, within theses emerging official art institutions. This study argues that the dominant artistic ideology illustrated in these National Gallery collections was determined by a social elite, which was, at its heart, British. Its collective taste was predicated on models established in Great Britain and on traditions and on connoisseurship. This visual instruction in the British ideal of culture, as seen through the Academy, was regarded as a worthy aspiration, one that was at once both highly nationalistic and also a tool of Empire unity. This ideal was nationalistic in the sense that it marked the desire of these Boards to claim for the nation membership of the world's civil society, whilst also acknowleging that the vehicle to do so was through an enhanced alliance with British art and culture. The ramifications of an Empire-first aesthetic model were tremendous. The model severely constrained taste in domestic art, limited the participation of indigenous peoples and shaped the reception of modernism. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / "A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy" Includes bibliography.