ORIGINAL ARTWORK
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For more than two decades, BrandNet has commissioned original artworks to tell Australian military stories. These paintings became the source of limited-edition prints, medallions, collectables and gifts that found their way into thousands of Australian homes. The original paintings themselves were never sold. They have remained in the BrandNet Archives ever since.
Now, for the first time, the originals are being offered to collectors. Unlike the numbered editions that came after it, the original is not one of a limited edition. It is a true one of one. There is only one original, and once it is sold it leaves the BrandNet Archives and will never be available again.
Centenary of the First Fleet is the original maritime painting by Don Braben, commissioned for the 2013 centenary of the Royal Australian Navy’s first fleet entry into Sydney Harbour, the anniversary commemorated by the International Fleet Review. It captures the morning of 4 October 1913, with seven warships of the new Royal Australian Navy at sea on their final approach to Sydney: the battlecruiser HMAS Australia leading and flying the flag of Rear Admiral Sir George Patey, followed by the cruisers Melbourne, Sydney and Encounter with Yarra astern, and the destroyers Parramatta and Warrego flanking the flagship. The subdued sea and sky keep the ships the focus, while the early light locates the scene in the hours before the celebrated harbour entry.
This artwork was commissioned by BrandNet in 2013.
The fleet’s arrival was far more than a ceremonial entrance. Australia had federated only twelve years earlier and had long relied on Britain’s Royal Navy for maritime defence. On that day, responsibility for the Australian Station passed from Royal Navy command to the Royal Australian Navy, and Defence Minister Senator Edward Millen described the fleet’s arrival as announcing Australia’s coming of age. Sydney turned out in enormous numbers, with boats crowding the harbour and spectators filling the headlands. Within a year the new fleet was at war: in 1914 it operated against German possessions in the Pacific, and Sydney destroyed the German cruiser Emden near the Cocos Islands.
Braben’s painting returns the viewer to the quieter moment just before the fleet entered the Heads, with each ship researched and positioned according to the historical record, the arrangement of the destroyers giving the foreground breadth and helping the viewer read the fleet as a coordinated unit.
Completed in 2013, the original became the centrepiece of the First Fleet centenary collection, with its editions deliberately finite. The painting connects two anniversaries, the Fleet Unit’s historic approach in 1913 and the Navy’s centenary commemoration a century later, and at full scale Braben’s treatment of the seven ships, sea and morning light can be appreciated exactly as the artist intended.
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