Allport Library and Museum Of Fine Arts

Hobart’s Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts is a heritage collection of colonial artefacts. The Museum is located within the State Library of Tasmania in central Hobart.

The Library and Museum are housed in a permanent display of Georgian-style rooms. The collection includes colonial paintings and prints, Georgian silver and glass and fine English, French and Chinese porcelain. There are displays of mahogany and walnut furniture dating from 1680, including excellent examples of Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite. The Library features fine and rare books, manuscripts and photographs dating from the 1800s.

The Allport family originally settled in Tasmania in 1831 and played a significant role in Tasmania’s artistic, cultural and social development. Work by Mary Morton Allport (1806-1895), one of Australia’s earliest notable female artists, features in the collection. Her son, Morton Allport (1830-1878), was a scientist, naturalist and one of Tasmania’s earliest photographers, and her granddaughter, Curzona Frances Louise Allport (1860-1949) was also a painter.

Cecil Allport (1858-1926) began the collection in 1899. He and his son Henry Allport (1890-1965) were historians, connoisseurs and collectors. Upon his death in 1965, Henry Allport bequeathed the entire collection to the people of Tasmania as a memorial to the Allport family.