• TROVE. I know it’s a bit obvious, but it’s such an amazing resource and I’m super proud that Australia is leading the world in digitising its history – and providing it free to access. It’s a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and hundreds of Partner organisations around Australia and is always my number one archive for any research on Australian subjects. I discovered it as a student and still recall the thrill I received when I accessed my first ‘primary’ source. Up until then, I had been relying on the writing of others – journal articles and books. It was a revelation! Trove set me on my path to independent research and allows me to contribute to the field I love – the women in Australian art history. I use it to view historic artist interviews and exhibition critiques, as well as viewing historic catalogues. Support it at https://trove.nla.gov.au/
• Papers Past. The New Zealand equivalent to TROVE, it contains archives of newspapers, magazines and journals, letters and diaries, parliamentary papers and books – and is free to search. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers
• Australian and New Zealand Art Sales Digest. This is another favourite archive of mine and another rather obvious one – particularly for industry insiders- though students may not have discovered it yet. It contains art market information for Australia and New Zealand including forthcoming auctions, past auction results from 1969 to the present, market statistics, news and opinion. It’s a great resource for experiencing an artist’s oeuvre and for those of us researching the provenance of an artwork. Not all features are free but it does offer a lot of great free options and the cost of a subscription is very reasonable. Go to https://www.aasd.com.au/
• As much of Australia’s early Western art history focused in and around the National Gallery School, Melbourne archives have been extremely important to my research. Apart from the State Library of Victoria (which is an amazing archive but can be accessed via Trove), I have found The Public Record Office of Victoria a great place to find passenger lists and other historic documentation including wills and probate records. https://prov.vic.gov.au/. Some records you need to pay for but it’s nominal cost. Other states have similar archives that are searchable, if not yet digitised.
• The National Archives of Australia is another great resource and can lead you to some interesting details of an artist’s life. https://www.naa.gov.au/
• If your artist travelled to Europe, as many did, then Gallica is another incredible archive. It is the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its partners and has been online since 1997. It contains several million items for free download and thousands of new items are added every week. You can access all the important historic exhibition catalogues such as the Paris Salon (and its rivals) as well as newspaper and journal reviews. Many of these old catalogues provide the address of the artist as well details of their training. Check it out at https://gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/france/aix-en-provence?mode=desktop
• The British Newspaper Archive is another great resource that is free to search, though accessing the actual pages is limited to subscribers. They have a large number of historic newspapers and journals digitized and if your search reveals some great new information, it might be worth you taking a short subscription. The fees are very reasonable. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ You can also gain access to findmypast.com which may provide the historian more bang for their buck than ancestry.com. You can also search the 1921 census at findmypast if that’s relevant to your research.
• Many Australian artists exhibited with the Royal Academy in London. You can explore their exhibition catalogues and student lists at the Royal Academy Archive at https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists
• For artists who lived and work and America, the Library of Congress newspaper archives are a great free resource: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/ 
• There are also several open library sites across the web that provide digital access to out of copyright publications. Try Project Guttenberg Australia at https://gutenberg.net.au and Open Library at https://openlibrary.org/
• The Frick Art Reference Library can produce surprising results and well worth a quick search. https://library.frick.org/discovery/search?vid=01NYA_INST:Frick
• The last couple I’m going to leave you with are a bit hit and miss for the Australian researcher though are definitely ones you should know about. Firstly the Getty Research Institute Provenance Index https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/provenance/search.html and the University of Heidelberg archive can be a great place to find historic art journals such as “The Studio” magazine https://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/Englisch/helios/digi/digilit.html

Happy hunting everyone!