The native butterflies of Tasmania take their palette from the oranges, browns, umber, ochre, green and black. Their habitat dictates that they won’t come flashing out in the sunlight dressed in shining tropical colour. The patterns too are humble and too subtle. However the girls in the lithograph of Alfred Ducote are flying with jewelled fairyland wings of dazzling delicacy. A soaring wealth of fantasy scarlet, Tuscan red, pink, blue, green, yellow. Sapphire, emerald, ruby, garnet, topaz, silver, gold. And pearl. Cherry pink, apple green, poppy red. They tumble and soar and float in their joyful passage across the skies, above the wash of pale blue ocean.
(Carmel Bird, ‘A commodity of women’)