Jubilee exhibition of Australian art

profited little materially; a t any rate, he died in miserable circumstances with no artistic Australia until his death in 1878. An admirer of Tu r n e r a n d Cox and a pupil o f Copley posterity. Fielding, he belonged to the English Romantic tradition. His strength lay in water- I t is matter for regret that there were no earlier genre painters or a t least no encourage- colour, as seen here in two views o f Sydney. men t for such as may have existed. Thus it will be seen that, although this section o f the Another professional, o f less achievement, was Eugene von (hierard (The Barwon River), Exhibition has been selected from the best and best-known collections, there are no whose father was court painter to Emperor Francis I o f Austria. Von Guerard made many pictures o f common life before the Gold Rush a t all. All the vivid types o f our early records o f the Australian landscape, as did George French Angas (Volcanic 147ehl near Mount times—the swaggering soldier and the surly convict, the proud settler, the sailor, the Schank). Th e works o f both were extensively reproduced in lithographic form a n d are sporting parson, the whaler--in the bright settings of old Sydney and Hobart Town have chiefly o f topographical interest. passed away unrecorded by any important painter; all that we have is, once in a while, O f minor figures perhaps the most interesting is Captain J ame s Wallis (corroboree at a few figures in a landscape, men in chimney-pot hats a n d women in bright shawls, dotted Newcastle). Wallis, commander a t Newcastle (N.S.W.) from 1816 to 1819, was the author about to help the design. W e can guess, o f course, wha t such scenes were like, b u t our o f one o f the most beautifully produced books relating to Australia, the Historical Account guesses are no more than that. This failure to record contemporary life is unfortunately o f the Colony o f !few South Wales. I n a fine piece o f colonial resourcefulness his drawings for a weakness o f all Australian art, or has been until recently. the hook were engraved by W. Preston, a convict, on sheet copper used for the bottoms Such painting, however, was against the spirit o f the times of which we are talking, o f vessels. Another official personage o f artistic ability represented here was William except for pictorial moralists. O n the credit side we must admire the enterprise a nd Light (Self Portrait), sometime intelligence officer on the staff of the Duke o f Wellington industry of early artists a nd craftsmen who persisted with their work often with little on the Peninsula and afterwards Surveyor-General o f South Australia. re\vard and often with improvised equipment. Perhaps it is remarkable that so much as This section o f the Exhibition, which begins with one o f the earliest Australian paint- done; in our o new settlements there is not more—i w n fact there is very much less. ings, Watling's Sydney, Gore, may be said to end with the works o f Martens. After him O f the early painters, the most notable for ou r purposes were all convicts. They painters were to see Australia differently, through the eyes o f such transitional figures as included Thomas Watling, who, in 1794, painted the first oil painting o f Sydney (Svdner Buvelot and eventually with the vision of the native sons. T h e homeland o f Britain and Cove) ;.Joseph I ce1 t (Mt. Direction and Hobart Town), whose topographical watercolours Jurol)e Was to 1)ecolne less insistent. of'old New South Wales a nd V a n l)icmen's I a n d were reproduced in London in a \Ve may well take pleasure in these old works, though we might hesitate to claim any celebrated series of engravings; Thomas Griffith \ \ a i newr i gh t (Portrait o f Mis. Wilson), of them as masterpieces in the European sense. But many have verve and beauty and they who has left us some delightful drawings of the belles o f Hoba r t Town ; and William show us Australia as it appeared to a small integrated community of pioneers, none the less Buelow Gould (Flowers and Fruit), whose real name is said to have been Holland and pioneers whatever their individual status in it. I n this section there is compressed for those whose skilful and often extremely attractive still-lifes reminded the colonists o f a n older who seek it a whole history o f early Australia--the background o f the unfamiliar country- and more settled civilisation. Gould settled his score in ma ny a n old inn with these works. side, a nd the tight little Georgian world which the homesick exiles sought to create in Fairly early in the piece other painters o f more socially acceptable character arrived in Sydney and Hobart Town, the world of Wainewright's portraits of gentlewomen and ;-\11Stmalia of their own free will. Such a one was Benjamin Duterrau (Sullivan's Gore). Gould's still-life, a world in which the aborigines are strange onlookers; then in the a Huguenot-descended Londoner, who arrived in Hoba r t Town in 1833 when over 60, gold rush scenes we glimpse a whole new tide of migration which was to transform the became a friend of the Governor and lectured on art. Duterrau, who, incidentally, was one old colonial ways, create a great new colony and modify the whole Australian atmos- o f Australia's first etchers, took a highly intelligent interest in the aborigines a nd made phere with new kinds o f people a nd new ways of thinking. some valuable records o f them. O u r early artists, we have seen, fall roughly into three groups—the convicts whose con- ro Va n 1)iemens Land also came J o h n Glover (My Harvest Home and On the Tamar), trill to a national culture may consider more than atoned for their transgressions a n extremely well-known artist, and a founder and sometime president of the O l d Wa t e r whatever they may have been; the cultivated amateurs who included sketching as part Colour Society. Glover had worked in France under the patronage o f Louis XV I I I a nd o f the equipment o f a gentleman o f the time; and the professionals who paved the way for the Duke o f Orleans. I n 1831 he abandoned a l)105Per0U5 career, took u p a grant o f land Buvelot and the Australian school. Wh a t they have left to us is to be looked a t with in Va n Diemen 's Land and moved there with all his family, thereafter combining a r t with sympathetic eyes. These messages from our past should interest, charm, and, it may be, the rural pursuits depicted in Ali' Harvest flonie. His work reflects a serene a n d ordered move us. life. Here, too, at various times were John Skinner Prout (Break o f Day), lecturer as well as painter, and a nephew o f the draughtsman Samuel Prout; Simpkinson de Wesselow, a nephew of S i r J ohn Franklin and in the 'forties in charge o f Hoba r t Observatory, a view from which is included in the works here shown; and Robert Dowling ('Tasmanian Aborigines), son o f a Launceston clergyman. Contemporary with these men and in the estimation of' m o s t c r i t i c s m o r e important as a painter than any o f them, was Conrad Martens, represented here by three works. M a r t e n s , who was horn in London in 1801, arrived in Sydney in 1835 and remained in 10 11