'Bushrangers And Outlaws' By William Strutt

“Bushrangers and Outlaws” is a painting illustrated by William Strutt, produced long after his return to English and displayed at London’s Royal Academy in 1887. The painting depicts the “read-shirted” leader of the gang in a confidant and most heroic pose in contrast to the fear and anxieties of the bourgeois colonial types in which his gang and him are robbing. This painting is significant because Bush-ranging appears as a regular focus in many Australian Literature from about the 1880s to the 1890s. In the lead-up of Federation, the painting conveys retrospective praises about bush mythology which defines the sense of “Australianness”. Henry Lawson’s eulogising poem “Taking His Chance”, is a heartrending account of a young bushranger, determined