Elioth Gruner’s rise to fame was spectacular. Years later, fellow-artist Lloyd Rees (1895-1988) recalled: ‘Sydney in 1917 was still excited about quite a small work called “The Morning Light”, painted two years earlier by Elioth Gruner. It was one of the freshest portrayals of Australian lig

In the context of Australian art, the precociously gifted Penleigh Boyd might rightly be called the ‘perfect painter’. A member of the remarkable Boyd dynasty of artists – his parents were Arthur Merric (1862-1940) and Emma Minnie (1858-1936), nephews Arthur (1920-99), Guy (1923-88) and Davi

After many years in England, Tom Roberts and his wife Lillie returned to Melbourne in early 1923 to settle at South Sassafras (nowadays Kallista) in the Dandenong Ranges. Here they built a cottage, ‘Talisman’, in which to live and enjoy the quieter, richer country life. Roberts responded war

“A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.”
Sir William Dobell

In Bondi Beach Sir William Dobell reveals his adeptness in capturing the endu

Illawarra Pastoral 1957 is a classically composed landscape from a popular period of Lloyd Rees’s art. It first came to public notice when it was exhibited at Sydney’s first Royal Easter Show exhibition in March-April 1958 and won a £150 prize. The painting was subsequently purchase

When Inge King died on April 23, 2016, she was a hundred years old and was one of Australia’s most celebrated artists. Unlike many artists who peak early in their careers and spend much of their later life repeating or attempting to resuscitate early triumphs, King with time grew consistentl

Tim Storrier was twenty-nine when he painted the present work. Still a young artist by most standards, he had already won his first major award, the Sulman Prize, at the age of just nineteen becoming the youngest artist to ever do so. The accolades and accomplishments did not abate during hi

Sam Fullbrook’s life and career were full of contradictions, an artist of considerable achievement and professional recognition, yet far from a household name in the minds of most Australians, even those well acquainted with the world of art. His work was distinctive and individual, invariab

In 1922 the English writer D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent a few months in the New South Wales seaside town of Thirroul. In just forty-five days Lawrence wrote Kangaroo, his eighth novel, which is set in Australia and filled with vivid and sympathetic descriptions of the country, fus

This previously uncatalogued painting by Tom Roberts depicts the isolated domain of the Cape Bruny lighthouse, built in 1838 on Tasmania’s Bruny Island. Roberts is thought to have made his first visit to the island state two years previously in 1878 in the company of his cousin-in-law Henson