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After his return from Port Lincoln, Angas prepared to mount the colony’s first solo art exhibition. He worked up his sketches, wrote texts and added additional paintings of the Morialta Falls, studies of insects and a defining view of Adelaide itself.
On 18 June 1845 his exhibition of more than 200 watercolours opened in the Legislative Council Chamber. Reviewers were impressed. They favoured his New Zealand watercolours, although one critic noted Angas’s remarkable capacity to capture ‘exact likenesses’ of Aboriginal people known locally: ‘There was not one, we believe, whom someone or other in the room, did not distinctly recollect’. A fortnight later, Angas sailed from Adelaide to Sydney to present his exhibition again. His intention was not to sell his works, but to attract subscribers to his folio editions, soon to be published in London.
