It's a fair bet that if the average Briton were asked to name an Australian artist, they would struggle to name anyone beyond Rolf Harris. But that is very much the UK's loss, the Royal Academy believes, as it announces plans to stage the first survey of its kind in this country looking at 200 years of Australian art.

"It is very long overdue," said the RA's director of exhibitions, Kathleen Soriano. "We should know more about these important figures as part of our art historical canon."

Soriano, who is curating the exhibition, which will open in September next year and be the Royal Academy's big autumn/winter show, said she had wanted to put on a major Australian show for years – "ever since I went to Australia in the early 1990s and I couldn't understand why there were so many artists that I'd never heard of".

She agreed that most Britons would not be able to name a single Australian artist. "People who know about contemporary art might say Shaun Gladwell, but no, I don't think they would."

"That doesn't matter," said Ron Radford, the director of the National Gallery of Australia. "A lot of Australians don't know much about British art but they do know a lot about their own art, that's something that's changed in the last 50 years – Australians are quite passionate about their own art."

The two galleries are partners on what will be something of a landmark show with over 180 works of art. It will include works by Aboriginal artists such as Rover Thomas Joolama and Fiona Foley; early 19th century European settler landscapes by artists such as John Glover; the more German Romantic inspired work of artists such as Eugene von Guérard from the middle of the century at the time of the gold rush; the Australian impressionists led by Tom Roberts; early Modernists such as Margaret Preston; mid-century Australian superstars Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan; right up to internationally recognised contemporary artists such as Gladwell and Tracey Moffatt.

There have been few big Australian art shows in the UK. The most significant were an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the Hayward in 1993 and a show of contemporary Australian painting at the Whitechapel in the early 1960s. The last time the RA looked meaningfully at Australian art was 1923.

"I think British audiences might be a little shocked and agreeably surprised at the high quality of the works," said Radford. "So many curators who come from Europe to Australia are just so surprised by the quality, particularly the landscapes."

He thought eyes would also be opened with the Aboriginal art in the show. "Britain has been less responsive than Europe, the US or Canada has been to Australian Aboriginal art, I don't quite know why. But people might be pleasantly surprised and I think Britain is very ready for it."

The story will be told through a theme – Australia's land and landscape – and will include paintings, drawings, photographs and multimedia works.

Even when early artists were heavily influenced by western art, the work they produced had a real Australian-ness to it, said Soriano, because of the astonishing diversity of light and landscape.

There will be significant loans from Australian collections, including arguably Boyd's greatest masterpiece, the enormous and important Paintings in the studio: Figure supporting back legs and Interior with black rabbit, from the National Gallery in Canberra. Soriano said Boyd was "to my mind, one of the stars of Australian painting." Another highlight will be Nolan – "many see him as the artist who inserted human drama into the Australian landscape" – and a 1946 work from his Ned Kelly series.

The show will conclude a year that will, in the main galleries, also see the first large scale show anywhere to explore the portraiture of Édouard Manet, the man considered the father of modern art; and the 244th annual Summer Exhibition, the largest open submission contemporary art show that attracted 11,000 entries last year.

In the Sackler Wing the RA will stage the first ever UK retrospective for George Bellows, who would probably be regarded as one of the greatest of all American artists, had he not died so early – aged 42, in 1925, from a case of neglected appendicitis. The show will include his better-known boxing paintings as well as those that reflect his fascination with the people and technology of early 20th century New York.

Other shows in the wing will include Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 and a showcase of the work of 19th century French artist Honoré Daumier.

There will also be a busy programme in 6 Burlington Gardens, the space that used to be the Museum of Mankind and will – by 2018, the RA expects – be linked to the main building as part of an ambitious overhaul. The RA also announced plans for a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Mariko Mori and a show devoted to the ideas and work of architect Richard Rogers, coinciding with his 80th birthday.