Mt Byron, Lake Petrarch, Tasmania

WILLIAM CHARLES PIGUENIT (1836-1914)

Mt Byron, Lake Petrarch, Tasmania

oil on canvas
77.0 x 128.0 cm; 116.5 x 167.5 cm (framed)
signed lower left: W.C. Piguenit

frame: original, Henry W. Callan and Son, Sydney (label attached verso)

Provenance:
Mrs Jessie Stanfield, Hobart
Thence by descent, private collection, Melbourne

Reference:
(possibly) 'Mr. W. C. Piguenit's New Picture', The Mercury, Hobart, 23 September 1876, p.2
(possibly) 'Opening of the Launceston Exhibition', The Coastal News and North Western Advertiser, Tasmania, 28 November 1891, p.3
(possibly) 'The Mercury: Epitome of News', The Mercury, Hobart, 10 April 1891, p.2
(possibly) 'Fine Oil Painting', The Examiner, Launceston, 8 November 1904, p.4

Related Works:
Lake Petrarch, Mount Byron Vale of Cuvier, Tasmania 1888, oil on compressed card, 32.0 x 52.5 cm, private collection

Estimate: $80000 - 100000

Result Hammer: $110000

He was perhaps the unconscious founder of an Australian school of art which might well be encouraged, for, whether on the flat plains of the far west, the   rugged mountains of Tasmania, the dense foliage of the northern rivers, or the wild waves of the ocean, he saw and depicted beauty in everything. His works are in the front line of Australian art.(1)

William Charles Piguenit belongs to the great generation of late 19^th century Australian artists that include Eugene von Guérard(1811-1901), Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902) and Louis Buvelot (1814-1888) but with the distinction of being Australian born. He had the great good fortune to have a career aligned to a propitious period in Australian history. As a colonial tyro he emerged at a time when a growing audience for art and a developing interest in the unique qualities of the Australian landscape permitted a talented and well credentialed artist to carve out a professional career as a painter in the colony. The colony was prosperous: gold, the resulting migration boom and continued exploration paralleled his career path as an Australian metaphor: somewhat rocky origins, a new leaf, hard work, experience and professional competence, emerging independence, prosperity, redemption and fame.

His father had been transported in 1830 to Hobart where he settled, married and raised a family. Piguenit’s mother was possibly the source of his first education as an artist. She ran a boarding school which included in its curriculum lessons in music and drawing. In 1850, at the age of 14, he joined the Tasmanian Lands and Survey Department where he worked as a draughtsman for 23 years. His duties involved the geological survey of Tasmania – exploring, drawing, mapping and later photographing the state – and introduced him to its wild and remote corners. It was the refusal of his employer to grant him leave to visit England, combined with growing public interest in his art, that led to his resignation from the position in 1873 to devote his time to painting. 

These practical, functional beginnings as an artist provided a technical training in recording for commercial, military or political purposes country often previously unseen by Europeans. With time and through encounters with other artists, as distinct from geographers, he gained enough confidence to set up as an artist in his own right.

Piguenit had already exhibited his work in Melbourne and a watercolour sketch of Mt Wellington from the Huon Road attracted the interest of the Daily Telegraph in 1870 which called Piguenit ‘a young artist who gives promise of better things’.(2) Exactly 44 years later, the same newspaper published a eulogy detailing his many achievements,(3) and listing the numerous paintings which had entered the important public collections of the period, none less than his Mount Olympus 1875 which became the first work by an Australian-born artist to be purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (see Figure 2). Both Mount Olympus and Mt Byron, Lake Petrarch, Tasmania depict the scenery near Lake St Clair. In both works, Piguenit enhances the spectacular scenery with atmosphere: swirling clouds, mist and the evocative time of day create a sense of drama. Standing in front of paintings such as these, the viewer is reminded of the majesty of nature. His paintings retain a component of the surveyor’s approach, but the topographical accuracy is seen through the prism of a theatrical arrangement of atmospheric effects. The elements of water, air and light become subjects as much as the landscape itself. 

Piguenit rarely introduces any trace of human presence in his work, and so his paintings evoke a primordial world. They are somewhat solemn reminders of purity and simplicity when parts of Australia, in particular inland New South Wales, were coming under growing economic pressure from agricultural interests while at the same time being ravaged alternately by drought and floods.

From this time topographic exactitude gives way to a sensitivity to the spiritual character of landscape.  Piguenit’s affinity with the concept of the Sublime invites comparison with the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) whose proto-modernist and proto-conservationist landscapes are nowadays
also noted for anticipating 20^th century Minimalism. His influence can still be seen hundreds of years later, particularly in the work of New York school artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970).(4)

Man’s relationship with nature is presented as a challenge with Nature characterised as a noble adversary. Piguenit belongs to the generation that initially regarded the Australian bush as intimidating. In his lifetime and in his work, however, we see it tamed and at the same time we grasp the possibility that it is vulnerable. The beauty of the Australian landscape as well as the challenges facing settlers and colonists in due course align with the earliest efforts at conservation and consciousness that Australia was not merely a commercial resource waiting to be exploited.(5) In his writings and his paintings, Piguenit now comes across as conflicted: he is nature’s promoter, publicist and protector.  His relationship to nature is nuanced.

Piguenit’s generation belongs to an era that was wholesome, when life was simpler, and work could be rewarded with prestige and honours. His life can also be seen as a pivot point, as he lived to see towards the end of his life that world superseded, and the following generation of artists, ambitious and eager to assert Australia’s unique character take a quite different view of the landscape.

Footnotes:

1. ‘Noted Australian Artist. The Death of Mr Piguenit,’ The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 20 July 1914, p.6

2. The Daily Telegraph, quoted in Kerr, J. (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists. Painters, sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p.629

3. The Daily Telegraph, op cit., p.6

4. Rosenblum, R., Modern Painting and the Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, Thames & Hudson, London, 1975

5. Bonyhady, T., The Colonial Earth, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp.301-304

Tim Abdallah

Tim Abdallah is a fine art consultant with more than thirty-five years of experience working in auction houses, public museum and commercial art galleries in Australia, the UK, Germany and Italy.  He joined Lawsons Auctioneers in 2002 as Head of Art and until 2017 was Head of Art at Menzies Art Brands.

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