Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

O U T I N T H E O P E N : Australian Pleinairism and the Heidelberg School A rth u r S treeton, W a lte r W ithers, G iro lam o Nerli Anita Callaway Facing page Arthur Streeton Australia 1867-1943 Sketch for ‘Still glides the stream, and shall for ever glide' 1895 Oil on cedar panel 42x26.5cm Gift of Lady Trout 1978 Queensland Art Gallery Below A rthur Streeton Still Glides the Stream, and Shall For Ever Glide 1890 Oil on canvas 82x153cm The A rt Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney he scale of the paintings, Sketch for 'Still glides the stream, and shall for ever glide' 1895, Wet day c.1892 and Beach scene, Black Rock c.1888, belies the extent of their appeal — the largest of the three is scarcely the size of a tabloid newspaper. Rarely do popular and scholarly tastes coincide so effortlessly. These images, now in the Collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, belong to that supposedly golden period of Australian painting, 1885 to 1910, which the twentieth century has reinvented as the 'beginnings of art in Australia',1and which is now known variously as the 'Heidelberg School' or 'Australian Impressionism'. We know that both terms are inaccurate, as this style of painting was by no means restricted to a specific school or location, and the artists involved had little direct experience of the work of the French impressionists. Yet these apparently contradictory descriptives (one seemingly regional, the other international) serve to highlight the complementary characteristics of Australian painting at that time: 'Heidelberg School' reminds us that the centenary of white settlement encouraged the depiction of recognisably Australian landscapes rather than the idealised European scenes of the past; 'Australian Impressionism' reminds us that this cultural nationalism was but part of a worldwide reaction against the tyranny of the academic studio, with the consequent endorsement of plein air painting. The term 'Heidelberg School' was coined by the critic Sidney Dickinson in 1891 when he reviewed exhibitions by Arthur Streeton (at Tom Roberts's Grosvenor Chambers studio) and Walter Withers (at 463 Collins Street), 'for their work has been done chiefly in that attractive [Melbourne] suburb, where with others of like inclination, they have established a Summer congregation for out-of-door painting'.2Streeton remained proprietorial about the Heidelberg School and its significance to Australian art history all his life, conveniently forgetting that its origins lay in the Box Hill camps initiated by Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams in 1885. Streeton was a latecomer to the Box Hill group, not joining until early in 1887 after he had been noticed by Roberts painting at Mentone in December 1886. The patchy Box Hill scrub, which inspired close-up, almost claustrophobic, bush scenes such as Roberts's A summer morning's tiff 1886 (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery) and McCubbin's Lost 1886 (National Gallery of Victoria), never really suited Streeton's expansive vision. Not until he painted at Heidelberg BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965