George Fairholme (1822-1889), artist, explorer and squatter arrived in Sydney from Scotland in 1839 and with young Scottish friends began the long and pioneering trek into Queensland. He settled at South Toolburra on the Darling Downs staying until 1852. This was the very beginning of white settlement at Brisbane and the Darling Downs and this young squatter is remembered as "a very intelligent gentlemanly man, the most intelligent of any of the squatters" (Henry Stoubart). The eleven lithographs offered include a view of Brisbane showing the first houses to be built. Privately printed by the artist on his return to Europe, as Fifteen views of Australia in 1845 by G.K.E.F., these views were intended for family and friends and are exceptionally rare. The only known complete work is held in family papers at the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. The set offered here corresponds to the holdings in the National Library of Australia for ten of the prints but includes an eleventh, "King Georges Sound W. Australia"; this lithograph may date from Fairholme's voyage to Australia in 1838.

George Fairholme (1822-1889), artist, explorer and squatter arrived in Sydney from Scotland in 1839 and with young Scottish friends began the long and pioneering trek into Queensland. He settled at South Toolburra on the Darling Downs staying until 1852. This was the very beginning of white settlement at Brisbane and the Darling Downs and this young squatter is remembered as "a very intelligent gentlemanly man, the most intelligent of any of the squatters" (Henry Stoubart). The eleven lithographs offered include a view of Brisbane showing the first houses to be built. Privately printed by the artist on his return to Europe, as Fifteen views of Australia in 1845 by G.K.E.F., these views were intended for family and friends and are exceptionally rare. The only known complete work is held in family papers at the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. The set offered here corresponds to the holdings in the National Library of Australia for ten of the prints but includes an eleventh, "King Georges Sound W. Australia"; this lithograph may date from Fairholme's voyage to Australia in 1838.

Fairholme sketched daily life in Australia. He had been well educated before arriving to start life on the land and whilst at Rugby School had learned to draw under the English artist Edward Pretty. The 1840s and 50s "were the golden age of horsemanship in Brisbane… and these drawings show the Leslies and the Leith-Hays at Canning Downs and South Toolburra as they brand their calves in the stockade and load the wool-packs onto drays to bring the wool clip down to Brisbane Town" (Susanna Evans Historic Brisbane, p.26). In 1852, Fairholme together with Arthur Hodgson as leaders of the Committee of the Moreton Bay and Northern Districts Separation Association organised an historic meeting in Brisbane to confirm that all the leading squatters of the Darling Downs district supported "the ultimate separation of the Northern districts of New South Wales". It took a further seven years for separation from New South Wales to be achieved and by this time Fairholme had returned to Scotland so did not witness the beginning of Queensland's independence in which he had played an embryonic role.

The explorer Ludwig Leichardt records that in 1844 he accompanied Fairholme on an expedition is search of fossil bones and to collect botanical specimens and the two men became friends. This friendship influenced Fairholme who went on to travel to the German cities described to him by Leichhardt. It was on this European expedition, a far cry from the Australian outback, that he met and married Baroness Pauline Poellnitz-Frankenberg in 1857 living for the rest of his life at the Castle of Wellenau in Austria, never to return to Australia.