Capital and country: the Federation years 1900–1913 celebrates the art of the newly-federated Australia alongside the work of Australians working in Europe during these formative years of the new century. 

The forty-six works in Capital and country range from sunlit pastoral scenes that convey the nation's enthusiastic and patriotic embrace of their own landscape to sophisticated portraits and figure paintings conceived in the bohemian enclaves of Paris and London. Here, well-known and loved paintings from the national collection by Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, George W. Lambert and Hans Heysen are brought to light in new ways alongside lesser-known images by Florence Fuller, Godfrey Rivers, Elioth Gruner and Richard Hayley-Lever that will both surprise and delight readers.