Road to Bendigo from Forest Creek, 1852, lithograph, State Library Victoria

Gill arrived on the Victorian goldfields in 1852. Sketches that he drew in situ, issued as black-and-white lithographs in August of that year, became some of the most famous images of the goldfields ever made. Unlike other artists, Gill didn’t depict diggers posed with their spectacular finds; instead, he gave the goldfields a human face, which the miners saw as being authentic to their experiences.