Unlike most students at the National Gallery Art School, Sam Fullbrook came to it as a clean slate, having seen very few paintings before the age of twenty-four. However, his instinct to study art in the post-war years proved a sound one. Sir William Dargie (1912-2003), Australia’s foremost
Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe (1810-61) was a well-known colonial identity, field surveyor and professional artist. The recipient of numerous awards and medals, Balcombe was also regarded as a man of sensitivity and wide-ranging interests. As one friend and colleague aptly put it, Balcombe was an
European migrants arriving in Australia before World War Two found that the easiest way to make a good life was to blend in as best they could. Many changed their names, simplifying and Anglicising their ‘difficult’ spellings and pronunciations, modifying their dress and behaviour to be acce
The Shoalhaven River was a continual source of inspiration to Arthur Boyd and, looking back over the artist’s vast body of work, formed a major part of Boyd’s oeuvre. The Shoalhaven region on the south coast of New South Wales, has historically been an area favoured by artists because of its
A painter of sporadic genius, John Perceval’s life swung from the occasional low point, mainly characterised by inactivity, to the greatest heights. His work invites comparison with that of his friend and brother-in-law Arthur Boyd. Both artists started their careers in the late 1930s and af
Garry Shead is one of Australia’s most renowned artists for his poetic depictions of Australian culture and the essence of human love. Arguably his most powerful series, Dance Sequence, is one of the artist’s most adored series and includes the present work, Dancers (Sloping) 2000.
Regular travellers on the Hume Highway, heading north from Melbourne towards Sydney will be familiar with the town of Avenel, about one and a half hours into the trip. The landscape there is heavily treed and yet to the right, you are aware of Strathbogie Ranges as they rise steeply, not tha
Eugene von Guérard, born in 1811, began his life in courtly Vienna1 where his father Bernhard, a painter of miniatures, enjoyed the patronage of the Royal family. With changes in taste over time, however, von Guérard senior was obliged to seek patronage elsewhere, and so in 1830 f
Ti –Tree and She Oaks belongs to a key group of landscape paintings produced by John Perceval during a highly productive period working in and around Melbourne in the late 1950s.
Perceval’s career as a painter began during a period convalescing from polio in the 1930s, and
Although Frederick McCubbin is best known for his affiliation with the Heidelberg school, his finest works arguably resulted from a subsequent period of relative isolation. During the final decade of McCubbin’s life, from 1907 to 1917, the artist mainly worked alone and in the open air