Australia Art History 2: The colony

1. Australia Art History 2: The colony Eugene Von Guerard, 1884Old Ballarat as it was in the Summer of 1853-54: Oil on canvas 75.0 cm x 138.6 cm Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

2. Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal first introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travellers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celtism. was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.The term "picturesque" needs to be explained in terms of its relationship to two other aesthetic ideals: those of the beautiful and the sublime. By the last third of the 18th century, Enlightenment rationalist ideas about aestheticism were being challenged by looking at the experiences of beauty and sublimity as being non-rational (instinctual). Aesthetic experience was not just a rational decision - one did not look at a pleasing curved form and decide it was beautiful - rather it was a matter of basic human instinct and came naturally. Edmund Burke in his 1756 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful said the soft gentle curves appealed, he thought, to the male sexual desire, while the sublime horrors appealed to our desires for self-preservation.The Grand Tour and After (1660-1840)" Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds., Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing Cambridge University Press, 2002,

3. John Constable (1776-1837), Landscape and double rainbow, 1812, oil on paper laid on canvas, 33.7 x 38.4cm, Museum no. 328-1888. Given by Isabel Constable, 1888 http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/galleries/further/essay/girtin/index.html

4. The notions of beautiful and sublime as they relate to art are nestled within the history of eighteenth-century landscape painting, first British, and then American.  When discussed on these specific terms, the pair becomes a triad that includes the term "picturesque."  "Picturesque" serves as a sort of middle term to the previous two, and is rooted in the specific tradition of landscape painting.  Travel author William Gilpin first defined the landscape term as expressing "that particular kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture" (Watson, 1970, 19).  The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque summarizes the history of the three terms as they relate to British and American landscape painting.  It describes paintings in "the beautiful" tradition as containing "serene, calm landscape(s) consisting of idealized natural forms arranged in a balanced composition" (Ketner and Tammenga, 1984, 10).   It is important to note the term "balanced" in this description, as it evokes Burke's notion of "the beautiful."  Picturesque paintings depicted "rough, craggy trees and foliage, sharp contrasts of light and shadow, and rustic anecdotes" (ibid).  The emphasis in these paintings was on "the variety and contrast of visible, rather than idealized, nature" (ibid).  Finally, sublime painting is discussed in this way: "Terror and wonder engendered the emotional bases of a sublime aesthetic response to wild nature... Tremendous mountains, deep valleys, and cataclysmic storms...were typical subjects of sublime landscapes" (ibid).  Burke's conceptualization emerges once again, in that terror and vastness are defining qualities of eighteenth-century landscape painting.

5. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), Hornby Castle, from Tatham Church, 1816-1818, watercolour on paper, 29.2 x 41.9cm, Museum no. FA 88, Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857 http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/galleries/further/essay/girtin/index.html

6. When the last shipment of convicts disembarked in Western Australia in 1868, the total number of transported convicts stood at around 162,000 men and women. They were transported here on 806 ships. The transportation of convicts to Australia ended at a time when the colonies' population stood at around one million, compared to 30,000 in 1821. By the mid-1800s there were enough people here to take on the work, and enough people who needed the work. The colonies could therefore sustain themselves and continue to grow. The convicts had served their purpose. Transportation to the colony of New South Wales was officially abolished on 1 October 1850, and in 1853 the order to abolish transportation to Van Diemen's Land was formally announced. South Australia, and the Northern Territory of South Australia, never accepted convicts directly from England, but still had many ex-convicts from the other States. After they had been given limited freedom, many convicts were allowed to travel as far as New Zealand to make a fresh start, even if they were not allowed to return home to England. At the time, there was also a great deal of pressure to abolish transportation. Given that only a small percentage of the convict population was locked up, many believed that transportation to Australia was an inappropriate punishment - that it did not deliver 'a just measure of pain'. This, combined with the employment needs of Australia's thriving population, ensured the abolition of convict transportation

7. Brownlow Hill [near Camden, NSW], Nov. 1 1871, by Conrad Martens.Original held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. The words ‘country’ and ‘landscape’ are both used to express a sense of place. For Indigenous Australians, ‘country’ specifically expresses the sustaining relationship that exists between people and place. ‘Landscape’ is a more European term, and can include abstract philosophical or aesthetic interpretations. Whose ‘place’—Indigenous or European Australians—is it that is being shown in the image? Country and Landscape, National Library of Australia, John Gloverhttp://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/countryandlandscape/artistworks-john_glover.html

8. Eugene von Guerard (1811-1901) Slide number 15 Govett's Leap and Grose River Valley, Blue Mountains, New South Wales 1873Oil on canvas, 68.5 h x 106.4 w cm, National Gallery of Australia.

10. Nicholas Chevalier 1828- 1902 Working Australia 1854-67, New Zealand 1854-69, England from 1870 Studley Park at sunrise [Sunrise on the Yarra] 1861 Painting oil on canvasBonyhady(1986), p3489.1 (h) x 120.0 (w) cm Framed 117.1 (h) x 147.9 (w) x 10.4 (d) cm signed and dated l.l., oil "N. Chevalier 1861"Gift of Mrs Dorothy Gurner

11. Born St. Petersburg 1828, Nicholas Chevalier studied architecture at Lausanne in 1845 and a few years later, in 1848, painting at Munich. In 1851 he moved to London where he studied lithography under Louis Gruner. Chevalier arrived in Australia in 1855 and worked as a painter and illustrator. He drew lithographs in Melbourne and his album of twelve chromo-lithographs was published in 1865. They were the first to be produced in Australia. He departed Australia in 1865 for Aotearoa New Zealand (where he produced a few etchings) before returning to London in 1868 where he died in 1902.

12. Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902) Parker River waterfall, Cape Otway,  1862 Oil on canvas 130 x 183 cm Bequest of Mrs. Blondel, 1923 Art Gallery of Ballarat

13. In the late 1850s and 1860s Studley Park in Kew was a popular picnic spot for the people of Melbourne and a site depicted by numerous artists. Studley Park at sunrise is one of Nicholas Chevalier’s few paintings from the early 1860s that depicts a local scene. Arriving in Australia at the end of 1854, the Russian-born artist had experience working in commercial lithography and spent his first six years in Australia as a cartoonist for the Melbourne Punch. From the early 1860s Chevalier travelled throughout south-east Australia and New Zealand in search of dramatic mountain ranges and seascapes for his subject matter.In Studley Park at sunriseChevalier shows the Yarra River flanked by tall trees and open bushland stretching through the composition. He was interested in conveying the awe-inspiring beauty of the landscape and the atmospheric effects of nature, such as the morning light and the glistening surface of the water. Choosing to paint the scene at sunrise gave Chevalier an opportunity to explore these artistic concerns and to depict the activity on the river.1 A group of children are shown gathered on the river bank; a young boy skimming rocks across the glassy water’s surface. Hodgson’s Punt is also depicted crossing the river. This punt connected the suburbs of Collingwood and Kew. John Hodgson was a Melbourne public servant whose 1860 house gave its name to Studley Park.21 The work has a ‘companion painting’ in The survey paddock at sunset 1861. This work is held in the National Collection.2 Tim Bonyhady, Australian colonial paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1986, p. 36.

14. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (Portrait of Jane Scott) (c.1843) watercolour on paper, Collection of the National Gallery of Australia

15. Thomas Griffiths Wainwright (1794- 1867)Artist and writer, was born in October 1794 at Richmond near London, the son of Thomas Wainewright and his wife Ann, daughter of the publisher, Ralph Griffiths. The boy was brought up by his grandfather, Dr Ralph Griffiths, and after his death by an uncle, George Edward Griffiths. Wainewright was educated at Greenwich Academy where the headmaster, Dr Charles Burney, was another relative. At 19 Wainewright began studying painting under John Linnell and Thomas Phillips. In April 1814 he bought a commission in the 16th Regiment, but resigned after only thirteen months service. About this time he suffered a severe illness accompanied by hypochondria which affected him for the rest of his life.As well as painting he began writing for the London Magazine under the pseudonyms of Janus Weathercock, Egomet Bonmot and Cornelius Van Vinkbooms. His articles soon won him entrée to literary circles where he became friendly with Lamb, Hazlitt, Hood, de Quincey, Charles Dickins and others. At 26 he began exhibiting his paintings at the Royal Academy where he came strongly under the influence of Henry Fuseli. The work Wainewright produced in England was so similar to that of Fuseli that it was sometimes confused with that of the master.On 13 November 1817 he married Eliza Frances Ward, the daughter by a previous marriage of Mrs Abercromby. His grandfather had left him the income from £5250, which amounted to some £200 a year. Wainewright placed the capital sum of his inheritance in trust for his young wife, arranging that the money would go to her at his death. However, he lived above his income and was soon heavily in debt; by forging the signatures of his cousin, Edward Foss, and his father, Edward Smith Foss, a solicitor, to a power of attorney in July 1822 he obtained £2250 of his capital from the Bank of England. Two years later with a second forgery he obtained the remaining £3000.

16. WAINEWRIGHT, Thomas GriffithsAustralia, 1794 - 1867Frederick George Brodribb1840, Hobart coloured chalks, white gouache on cream paper53.0 x 43.0 cm (sheet)Gift of Miss L.K. Symon 1965Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

17. the Bank of England discovered his forgeries and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He returned to England, was arrested on 9 June 1837 and charged with having attempted to defraud the Bank of England with a forged power of attorney. Although the governor of Newgate gaol on behalf of the Bank of England had persuaded him, with a promise of merely nominal punishment, to plead guilty, he was sentenced to transportation for life. In his own words, he was 'forthwith hurried, stunned with such ruthless perfidy, to the Hulks at Portsmouth, and then, in five days, aboard the Susan, a convict transport bound for Van Diemen's Land'. He arrived at Hobart Town on 21 November.He worked at first on the roads in a chain-gang and was quartered in the prisoners' barracks in Campbell Street; later he was transferred to the Hobart Hospital as a wardsman. His health started to decline. The doctors were unable to diagnose the complaint, which was probably disseminated sclerosis. He was allowed some freedom and this enabled him to practise his beloved painting. Many of the portraits he produced at this time are among the best of his works and were mostly painted in gratitude for small favours by the subjects. In 1844, helped by the hospital authorities, he petitioned the governor for a ticket-of-leave, but his conditional pardon was not granted until 14 November 1846. He died of apoplexy at St Mary's Hospital on 17 August 1847

18. John Glover (1767 –1849) John Glover was an English born Australian in what is known as the early colonial period of Australian Art. In Australia he has been called the first true Australian landscape painter.Glover was born in England in 1767 and grew up in a most fabulous time for elegance and innovation, the 18th century. In this milieu, Glover was very successful: artistically, financially and socially. Recognised by his peers as a man of genius, he made his mark in England, then at retiring age, he moved to Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land. Here he continued his career, refreshed, with a new landscape to depict as it had never been shown before. John Glover sounds like a charming and fun man: he has been described as cheerful, mischievous, eccentric, even-tempered, gregarious, energetic, adventurous and enthusiastic man with a good countenance, an almost heavenly aspect and excellent spirits. A sober person who enjoyed excellent health, he had a sturdy build and rather untidy personal style. His two club feet and 18 stone frame (he was over six feet tall) didn’t slow him down, Glover was a great traveller. Early in his career Glover’s success was in landscape watercolours. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1795 and for a number of years showed there annually. He first exhibited in oils in 1799 at The Royal Academy, London, and had his first major success as a painter in that medium. He sold his view of Durham Cathedral in 1812 for 500 guineas. Glover toured Europe on painting expeditions and his work was praised in the highest circles. He exhibited in Paris in 1814 and was presented with a gold medal by Louis XVIII for his large oil The Bay of Naples. In 1820 he opened his own very successful gallery at 16 Old Bond Street London. “Nevertheless, it is his Australian paintings that are his finest and will ensure his lasting fame,” according to Glover specialist, David Hansen. “In these late works, painted when the artist was in his sixties, he invigorates the European classical tradition

19. Slide number 16 John Glover, Natives on the Ouse River, Van Diemen's Land, 1838, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

21. and eighteenth-century conventions with bright antipodean light, the colours and forms of Australian native vegetation and the traditional customs of the Aboriginal people. They are among the most important landscapes made outside Europe in the 1830s,” writes Hansen. Three of Glover's sons left England for Van Diemen's Land arriving in 1829. Two years later Glover and his wife Sarah joined them with their oldest son, John Richardson Glover. They disembarked at the Tamar river near Launceston on the artist's 64th birthday, February 18th, 1831.Excited at the prospect of finding a new landscape, he saw it with fresh eyes and was the first artist to paint the real light and botanica, not an imaginary European version. Here in the colony his style transformed itself as he responded to the light and landscape of this island. He was the first to notice, if not the first to depict, the "remarkable peculiarity of the trees in this country: however numerous, they rarely prevent your tracing through them the whole distant country."In 1831, he obtained one of the last large grants of land on the island and the following year settled at Mills Plains, Deddington, 20 kilometres from Evandale on a property he named Patterdale. Here he farmed and painted commissioned works for the landowners of the colony and landscapes for sale in London. Glover was prolific, in 1835 he sent 68 paintings to London to be exhibited, 38 of these were of Van Dieman’s Land. In 2001 one of these paintings Mount Wellington and Hobart Town with Natives Dancing and Bathing sold for over $1.5 million. Glover’s last major work was completed on his 79th birthday. He died at 82 in 1849 and is interred in a vault at Nile Chapel, Deddington. John Glover’s paintings are on display at major Australian galleries including in Tasmania the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. In Britain the V&A has a substantial collection of Glover and the Louvre in Paris also holds his work. Glover had lived two distinct artistic lives. He had great success in England and then came out to Australia where he, as critic John McDonald notes, ...totally reinvented himself, almost by accident as the first great Australian landscape painter,

22. John GLOVER A view of the artist's house and garden, in Mills Plains, Van Diemen's Land Oil on canvas.

23. WESTALL, WILLIAM (1781-1850), landscape artist, was born on 12 October 1781 at Hertford, England, the son of Benjamin Westall (1737-1793) and his second wife, Martha Harbord. He was taught to draw by his elder half-brother Richard (1765-1836), a water-colour painter, Royal Academician, and teacher of painting to Princess Victoria.In 1799 he was admitted to the Royal Academy School, where he was studying when at 19 he was appointed landscape artist with Matthew Flinders Investigator expedition to Australia, at a salary of 300 guineas. During the voyage he made a large number of pencil-and-wash landscapes in places visited by the Investigator and a series of coast profiles in pencil. When the Porpoise ran aground on Wreck Reef his sketches were 'wetted and partly destroyed' and, while Westall travelled in China, the drawings, regarded as part of the official record of the voyage, were taken by Lieutenant Robert Fowler to England. There, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks. they were handed to Richard Westall to be 'restored to a proper state'. The library of the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, now holds 139 sheets of these drawings.

24. William Westall (1781-1850) William Westall (1781 - 1850), self-portrait, courtesy of National Library of Australia. nla.pic-an7692976. .

25. William Westall (1781 - 1850) circa 1804 pencil on paper Dimensions: approx. 38 x 27cm Natural History Museum London

26. Augustus Earle (1793- 1838) Augustus EARLE, New South Wales, 1826 Female penitentiary or factory, Parramatta ,Watercolour, National Library of Australia

27. The London-born travel artist, Augustus Earle (1793-1838), left England in 1818 bound for the USA. This was the first stage of a remarkable, round-the-world journey that took him to South America, Tristan da Cunha, New South Wales, New Zealand, the Pacific, Asia, India, Mauritius and St Helena before returning home in late 1829. Most of his predecessors who worked outside Europe had been employed on voyages of exploration or worked abroad for wealthy, often aristocratic patrons. Earle, however, operated quite independently and was fortunate to be able to combine his wanderlust with an ability to earn a living through art. The body of work he produced now comprises what is arguably a unique record documenting the effects of European contact and colonisation during the early nineteenth century. Died in London on 10 December of `asthma and debility'

28. Portrait of Bungaree, a native of New South Wales, with Fort Macquarie, Sydney Harbour, in background, oil on canvas, 1826,Augustus Earle

29. Slide number 17 Benjamin Duterreau (1767- 1851) Stylized representation of George Augustus Robinson with Tasmanian Aborigines" The Conciliation" – Oil on canvas by Benjamin Duterreau, 1840 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

30. DUTERREAU, BENJAMIN (1767-1851), artist, was of French descent and was born in London in 1767. He worked as an engraver and in 1790 did two coloured stipple engravings after Morland, "The Farmer's Door" and "The Squire's Door". Taking up painting, between 1817 and 1823 he exhibited six portraits at Royal Academy exhibitions, and he also exhibited three genre pieces at the British Institution about the same period. Emigrating to Western Australia in his sixty-fifth year he decided not to stay, and went on to Hobart, where he arrived with his daughter in August 1832. He lived at the corner of Campbell and Patrick-streets, and practised as a portrait painter. In 1835 he did some etchings of aborigines, the first examples of that craft to be done in Australia. His best-known painting "The Conciliation" is in the Hobart gallery with a self-portrait and other works, including some modelling in relief. A large landscape is in the Beattie collection at Launceston, and he is also represented in the Dixson collection at Sydney. Duterreau died at Hobart in 1851. W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art; A. Graves, The Royal Academy Exhibitors and The British Institution; U. Thieme, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler.

31. Louis Buvelot (1814-1888) Near Lilydale 1874 Painting oil on canvasBonyhady(1986), p2846.0 (h) x 69.0 (w) cm Framed 74.3 (h) x 97.4 (w) x 11.8 (d) cm signed and dated l.c., oil "Ls Buvelot 1874"NGA 1977.666

32. BUVELOT, Louis Switzerland 1814 – Australia 1888 France 1834; Brazil 1835-51; Switzerland 1852-53; India 1854; Switzerland 1855-64; Australia from 1865Swiss-born and trained, Louis Buvelot specialised in painting scenes of the countryside close to Melbourne. Arriving in Victoria in 1865, Buvelot’s paintings of settled, domesticated land appealed to city dwellers and pastoralists alike, and he quickly established a successful career as a landscape painter.1 Admired by his contemporaries, Buvelot differed to earlier colonial artists by attempting to create a more naturalistic image of the Australian bush. Compared to the meticulous observation of Eugene von Guérard, Buvelot’s approach was much freer. Moving away from grand scenes and sweeping views, he used softly dabbed brushstrokes and an earthier palette to depict the land as a known and familiar place.In Near Lilydale Buvelot shows the new life and rejuvenation of springtime. A lamb – symbolising the season of spring – follows two women making their way through the landscape. Fresh green grass grows from the damp earth and blue skies are reflected in the surface of the water. Using a basic palette of browns and greens Buvelot skilfully creates the tones observed in the landscape, a subtle gradation between grasses, trees and earth.1 Tim Bonyhady, Australian colonial paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1986, pp. 15–17.

33. BUVELOT, Louis Switzerland 1814 – Australia 1888 France 1834; Brazil 1835-51; Switzerland 1852-53; India 1854; Switzerland 1855-64; Australia from 1865 'Mount Fyans' homestead 1869 Painting oil on canvas58.6 (h) x 95.3 (w) cm frame 84.2 (h) x 119.5 (w) x 9.0 (d) cm From the James Fairfax collection, gift of Bridgestar Pty Ltd 1993NGA 1993.550

34. BUVELOT, ABRAM-LOUIS (1814-1888), landscape painter, was born on 3 March 1814 at Morges, Vaud, Switzerland, the second son of François-Simeon (d.1848), a minor public official, and Jeanne-Louise-Marguerite, née Heizer (d.1856). Abram-Louis had one brother, Eugene-Jean-Louis-Henri (1820?-1852), who became a printer and lithographer. The Buvelot family had been citizens of Morges since 1677 where they had arrived as Protestant refugees from Condé-en-Barrois. In November 1830 Abram-Louis left Morges, probably to attend the drawing school, established in Lausanne in 1821, of which Marc-Louis Arlaud, a pupil of Louis David (1748-1825), was director and sole instructor. He is believed to have left Switzerland in 1834 and to have spent some months in Paris before going in 1835 to Bahia, Brazil, where his uncle François Buvelot (b.1777) had a coffee plantation in Leopoldina in 1825-42.In October 1840 Abram-Louis went to Rio de Janeiro, registering his profession as 'artist'. In December 1840 the Rio Academy of Fine Arts held its third public exhibition; Buvelot contributed two landscape paintings which were highly commended. He contributed a small number of landscapes to the academy's exhibitions each year, except in 1842, 1845 and 1851, until his return to Europe in 1852. After the exhibition of 1842 he was awarded a gold medal, and after the 1846 exhibition he was created a knight of the Order of the Rose.In September 1864 Buvelot left his family in La Chaux-de-Fonds and two months later sailed for Victoria from Liverpool accompanied by Caroline-Julie Beguin, who had been a fellow teacher at La Chaux-de-Fonds. The date of Marie-Félicité's death is not known. Their only daughter Jeanne-Louise-Sophie, born in Rio on 24 February 1843, had become an engraver of watch cases and in April 1862 married Fritz-Ulysse Vuille at La Chaux-de-Fonds; the last male Vuille, also Fritz-Ulysse, Buvelot's great-grandson, is thought to have died about 1929. On arriving in Melbourne in February 1865 Buvelot bought a photographer's studio at 92 Bourke Street East and took portraits for a year. In 1866 he moved to 88 La Trobe Street East and resumed his painting while Caroline-Julie gave French lessons to help Buvelot to establish himself as an artist in Melbourne. In 1873 he and Caroline-Julie moved to a cottage in George Street, Fitzroy. Buvelot contributed landscapes to various international, intercolonial and Victorian exhibitions from 1866 until 1882. His work was always well received and by 1869 his reputation in Melbourne as the colony's leading landscape artist was established. He served on the committee of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870-74 and also exhibited with this group.

35. Conrad Martens (1801–1878) Lake Illawarra, NSW 1835watercolour; 29.0 x 41.2 cmNational Library of Australia

36. Conrad Martens was a painter, best known for his landscapes. He became perhaps Australia's most famous colonial artist. Martens was born in England, where he trained under prominent artist and teacher, Copley Fielding. In 1833 he became official artist on the scientific voyage of the HMS Beagle - a voyage made famous by the evolutionary findings of Charles Darwin. It was one this voyage that Martens developed his unique style of factually accurate, yet artistically imagined landscape painting.After leaving the Beagle at Valparaiso in 1834, he travelled to Tahiti and then to Sydney, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was captivated by the beauty of Sydney Harbour, sketching the harbour foreshores even as his ship sailed through the Heads in 1835. With introductions to the gentry of New South Wales, he quickly became their favourite painter.Martens built up a clientele of the colony's social elite for whom he painted, including governors, politicians, the judiciary, leading families, clergymen and merchants of New South Wales. He painted watercolours and oils of their estates as well as landscape views. He was particularly attracted to the rugged beauty of Darling Point and environs. Conrad Martens, ca. 1840, by Maurice Felton oil painting. ML 28

37. The landscape theorist Edmund Burke helped popularise romantic notions of ‘terror’ and ‘awe’ in landscape. These emotions could be triggered by steep mountains, or gloomy grottoes. Known today as the Wombeyan caves (Burragorang Valley, New South Wales), this cavern had been discovered by surveyor John Oxley in 1828, and first explored in 1842. Martens visited soon after, sketching the cave formations to create several unusual paintings. Burrangallong Cavern, 1844 sepia wash drawing; 19.5 x 27.8 cm nla.pic-an2390652

38. William Strutt (1826-1926) William Strutt, Black Thursday, February 6th. 1851, 1864: oil on canvas; 106.5 x 343.0 cm. State Library of Victoria

39. Black Thursday, February 6th, 1851 is considered to be one of Australia's most important colonial paintings and one of the Library's most valuable. It depicts a devastating bushfire that struck Victoria in February 1851. Many died in the fire, which was so fierce and far reaching that its glow could be seen by ships in Bass Strait.Measuring 106.5 x 343cm, this large oil painting was painted by William Strutt, a Royal Academy trained artist who lived in Victoria from 1850 to 1862. Strutt never forgot his first experience of an Australian summer and made numerous sketches which he used many years later to compose the painting. A large and compositionally complex work, it shows groups of terrified people and animals fleeing the dense smoke of the advancing fire. In the foreground is a careful arrangement of dead animals, skulls and bones in a memento mori.http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/collections/treasures/black_thursday/blackthursday1.html

40. Studies of kangaroos pencil, watercolour on ivory paper 18.1 x 13.2cm sheet Purchased 1962 Art Gallery of NSW

41. William Strutt was born in Teighmouth, Devon, England, and came from a family of artists, his grandfather, Joseph Strutt, was a well-known author and artist, his father, William Thomas Strutt, was a good miniature painter. William Strutt enjoyed a student life in Paris, France, and England, studying figurative and history painting. In response to a near-breakdown and problems with his eyes, Strutt decided to visit Australia arriving 5 July 1850 on the Culloden, where he then married.In Melbourne, Strutt found employment as an illustrator on the short-lived Illustrated Australian Magazine, published by Thomas Ham, as there was little demand for the figurative and history paintings for which he was trained. Some of his designs did, however, lead to commissions, including a design for a new postage stamp, and an Anti-Transportation League card. Despite the lack of interest for major history paintings in Melbourne, Strutt continued to sketch suitable subjects, including the ‘Black Thursday’ bushfires, which swept over the colony on 6 February 1851. It was from these sketches that Strutt composed one of his most notable paintings some 10 years later, Black Thursday, February 6th. 1851, 1864, which depicted animals and men fleeing from the fire.In February 1852, Strutt joined the growing tide of men travelling to the gold-fields surrounding Ballarat Victoria. Despite working in the gold fields for eighteen months he found little success. He returned to Melbourne in mid-1853 and became actively involved in the city’s cultural scene, undertaking a number of portrait commissions and joining the Victorian Society of Fine Arts as a founding member.

42. Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-1880) Sly grog shanty, S.T. Gill 1869. La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria

43. Samuel Thomas Gill was born in Devon (England) where his father was a Baptist minister, and arrived in Adelaide together with his family in 1839. In the days before the widespread use of the camera it was possible for a painter of moderate talent to make a scant living by painting portraits of wealthy men, their wives and families, their properties and prize animals. If these portraits managed to make the house look a little larger, the horse a little faster, the wife a little more beautiful and ignored the unfortunate skin condition of the patron then they were likely to be praised by the paying customer as particularly “realistic”. S.T.Gill was able to make some money from paintings of this nature in both England and Adelaide and demonstrated at this stage a competent but unremarkable skill as a painter. It was not until he turned his hand to more general observations of the scenes of everyday life around him that his particular skills shone through. He was aware that the clumsy cameras of the time might be able to capture a remarkable degree of detail in their lengthy exposures but were not capable of capturing the character or atmosphere of everyday life in the same way that a skilled painter could. In 1846 he joined the Horrocks expedition to Spencer Gulf as a draftsman, but it was with the Victorian gold rushes from 1851 onwards that produced his most characteristic work. In 1850, Gill’s hand became inflamed and unusable for painting. Thus deprived of an income by his usual means, and further exacerbated by his intemperate habits he found himself bankrupt in September 1851. The gold fields were looking promising. Gill headed off to the Victorian goldfields with several companions but we have no evidence of him ever becoming a serious “digger”. Instead he left us some of the best records of life on the goldfields through his paintings and sketches of the time. Unfortunately, Gill’s familiarity with taverns, together with the long term effects of syphilis were to render his later years’ output erratic, and when he collapsed on the steps of the post office in 1880 few Melbournians had any doubts about the cause of death. White Hat Guide to ST Gill, Melbournehttp://www.whitehat.com.au/Melbourne/People/Gill.asp

44. BibliographyLaura Smith beautiful, sublime http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/beautifulsublime.htmThe Contributors Wikipedia online encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicturesqueAustralian culture portal http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/architecture/Australian Prints online Nicholas Chevalierhttp://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/catalogues/artist/8189/nicholas-chevalier.aspxThe Ocean to Outback, Australian Landscape Painting 1850-1950, National Gallery of Australiahttp://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/OCEANtoOUTBACK/Images/LRG/88185.jpgSetting the scene Ballarat 1851- 1854http://archive.amol.org.au/eureka/gallery2/002.htmJohn Glover Prize, John Glover, http://www.johnglover.com.au/john_glover.htmlSam Parker-Bowles John Glover and the Picturesque landscape: Glover Interpreted, The Ian Potter Centre, NGV, Australia. http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/glover/glover.htmlT.M. Perry, William Westall, Australian Dictionary Biography online edition, http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020534b.htmWilliam Westall, Natural History Museum, http://www.artfund.org/artwork/9375/19-botanical-sketchesWainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794 - 1847)Australian Dictionary of Biography Onlinehttp://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020509b.htmThe Wandering artist, Augustus Earle's travels around the World 1820-1829 National Library of Australia. .http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/earle/chrono.htmlDictionary of Australian Biography DUTERREAU, BENJAMIN (1767-1851)http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogD.htmlThe Ocean to Outback, Australian Landscape Painting 1850-1950, National Gallery of Australiahttp://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/OceantoOutback/Detail.cfm?IRN=40766&BioArtistIRN=19816&Dictionary of Australian Biography, Buvelot, Abram-Louis (1814 - 1888) http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030296b.htmState Library of NSW, Conrad Martenshttp://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/people_places/east/artists/martens.html