News location:

Canberra Today 16°/19° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Romantic put into context

WHETHER for his soaring, romantic impressions of Australia or the scientific detail in his paintings, Eugene von Guérard is acknowledged as Victoria’s (and probably Australia’s) most important colonial landscape painter.

Not just that, appointed the first master of painting at the National School of Art, Melbourne and curator of the National Gallery of Victoria, his early students included Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts and Rupert Bunny.

The NGA holds some of von Guérard’s master works, notably his mighty “North east view from the northern top of Mt Kosciusko” and now, in a touring exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria, we’ll be able to put his work in context as we see NZ and European landscapes and illustrated sketch books that throw light on the influence of European Romanticism, of his court-painter father Bernhard and of his own fascination with the geography, geology and vegetation of the New World.

Born in Vienna and trained as a painter in Rome, Naples and Düsseldorf, von Guérard migrated to Australia in 1852, where he travelled and sketched, later painting the forests of Gippsland and the Otways, the crater lakes of Victoria’s volcanic Western District and the peaks of the Kosciuszko plateau.

As the exhibition’s curator, Dr Ruth Pullin, explained at an exhibition preview held in the Austrian embassy, his work, particularly “Tower Hill”, is sometimes the only accurate representation we have of how the landscape in parts of Victoria looked before land degradation took place.

Eugene von Guérard, “Nature Revealed”, at the National Gallery of Australia, until July 15.

PHOTO: Eugene von Guérard’s “North east view from the northern top of Mt Kosciusko” (1863), oil on canvas, NGA.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews