Become a bookplate donor

If you’re looking for a gift to celebrate a special person or book lover in your life, then a personalised bookplate inside a new book from the State Collection would be ideal.

Your personal tribute to a friend or family member will be placed inside a specially selected book from the State Collection and preserved for future generations.

Each bookplate features a stunningly detailed illustration from the Library’s Rare Books and Pictures collections, with a dedication to your gift recipient or yourself. You’ll be invited to view the bookplate once it has been added to the collection.

The bookplate illustrations are updated annually, and we hope you enjoy the 2024 series featuring Australian native animals.

This unique, tax-deductible donation gives twice – it’s an ideal gift and it also supports the Library’s work in building our collection.

Choose your bookplate

You can select from the following bookplates, named after master illustrators whose valuable works are held in the Library’s collection:

• $175: John White (1756–1832)
• $500: Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901)
• $1000: John Gould (1804–1881)

Your gift is tax deductible.

About the illustrators

White

In 1786, John White (1756–1832) was appointed chief surgeon to the First Fleet and surgeon general in the colony of New South Wales until 1794. With a keen interest in natural history, White published Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: With 65 plates of non-descript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions in 1790. The work includes 65 engraved plates with some special editions including coloured plates. Little is known about the original artists of the plates, but there is some suggestion that White enlisted the skills of several convicts to create detailed watercolour illustrations for the publication. Perhaps the most famous of these ‘convict artists’ is Thomas Watling, who produced sketches and watercolour drawings for the journal.

Von Guérard

19th-century Austrian painter Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901) bravely set out to paint the unexplored territories of Australia ‘with the eye of a scientist and the heart of an artist’. While von Guérard failed abysmally in his gold-digging efforts, he was arguably one of Australia’s most important colonial landscape painters given his meticulous attention to detail and breathtaking compositions. A global traveller, von Guérard trained in Vienna and painted throughout Europe before settling in Australia in 1852 for the latter three decades of his life. Von Guérard served as the first Master of the School of Painting (1870–1881) for the National Gallery of Victoria.

Gould

English-born John Gould (1804–1881) was known as ‘the birdman’ and the ‘father of ornithology’ in Australia. Gould collected birds obsessively from a young age, and by 14 showed his entrepreneurial flair selling taxidermy to children of the aristocracy. Gould worked closely with his wife, artist Elizabeth Gould, who contributed her skills in illustration and lithography to a number of his publications. Whilst undertaking field work in Australia, Gould’s attention was also captured by the ‘strange’ mammals, and he is credited with describing 45 species.