An Aboriginal manc 1810–21

This mysterious portrait of an unknown, young Aboriginal man is believed to have belonged to Governor Lachlan Macquarie. The painting is by an unrecorded artist, created during the time Macquarie was Governor of NSW, sometime between 1810 and 1821. It has been described as ‘One of the NSW Aborigines befriended by Governor Macquarie’.

Macquarie was closely associated with Bungaree, the Eora man who had accompanied Matthew Flinders on his 1801–03 circumnavigation and mapping of the Australian continent. However, this is not a portrait of Bungaree, who would have been older than the young man depicted and it does not resemble other portraits of Bungaree from this time.