Extracting spatial data from historic artwork of Hobart and its region

The integration of spatial techniques with art can potentially provide information on past environments and culture. Nineteenth century landscape artwork from Hobart was examined to assess the accuracy of artists by applying photogrammetric techniques. Four prominent artists of the time, each from different backgrounds, varied markedly in their accuracy of depiction of landscapes. Computation of areas on artworks dedicated to features, such as forests, sky and fields, highlighted the significance of the social background and profession of the artist in composition. While gender did not affect the feature composition of works, the media used by 19th century females were restricted to drawing and water colour. To demonstrate the potential for integration of historical and spatial processes, forest clearance boundaries were mapped and dated from raw data of 19th Century paintings and photographs and later aerial photographs. Keywords: Historical artwork, features, spatial analysis, Hobart region