Landscape with Hay Wagon c1915

W.B. McINNES (1889-1939)

Landscape with Hay Wagon c1915

oil on canvas
51.0 x 61.5 cm; 77.0 x 86.5 cm (framed)
signed lower right: McINNES

Provenance:
Charles Ruwolt, New South Wales
Leonard Joel, The Charles Ruwolt Collection of Australian Paintings, Melbourne, 17 November 1966, lot 3
Elder Smith Goldsborough Mort Limited, transferred to Elders IXL, 1985 (label attached verso)
Foster's Group Limited, Melbourne
Sotheby's, The Foster's Collection of Australian Art, Melbourne, 23 May 2005, lot 16
Private collection, Sydney
Estate of the above

Exhibited:
Exhibition of Past Australian Painters Lent from Private South Australian Collections, John Martin & Co. in association with the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Adelaide, 8-29 March 1974, cat.81 (label attached verso)
Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2 March - 1 April 1984, cat.20
Portrait of Australia: The Elders IXL Collection, Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 30 March - 28 April 1985; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria, 4 May - 2 June 1985; Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria, 11 June - 9 July 1985; Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 July - 11 August 1985; Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, 16 August - 15 September 1985; Riddoch Art Gallery, South Australia, 25 April - 1 June 1986; City of Mildura Arts Centre, Victoria, Tamworth City Art Gallery, New South Wales, 22 May - 21 June 1987; Orange Regional Gallery, New South Wales, 26 June - 26 July 1987; Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery, New South Wales, 31 July - 30 August 1987; S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 4 September - 5 October 1987; Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame, Queensland, 30 April - 29 May 1988; Rockhampton Art Gallery, Queensland, 4 June - 3 July 1988; Brisbane City Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Brisbane, 11 July - 19 August 1988; Geraldton Art Gallery, Western Australia, 3-25 September 1988; Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, Western Australia, 30 September - 30 October 1988

Reference:
Radford, R., Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1984, p.39, cat.20 (illus.)
Radford, R., Luhrs, P. et al, Portrait of Australia: The Elders IXL Collection, Elders IXL, Melbourne, 1986, p.61 (illus. pl.39)
Burn, I., National Life and Landscapes: Australian Painting 1900-1940, Bay Books, Sydney, 1990, pp.46-47 (illus. pl.30)

Estimate: $50000 - 70000

Result Hammer: $60000

Landscape with Hay Wagon c1915 is a recognised masterwork of early twentieth-century Australian pastoral landscapes. It features a fresh spring palette, energetic brushwork and a dynamic composition that stretches down from the top of the rolling paddocks and steep hill to the riverbend nook below. The picture is an outstanding example of W.B. McInnes’ painterly style and captures the imagination with this important portrayal of the pioneer settler.

W.B. McInnes returned to Australia after three years painting abroad in 1913. His subsequent Melbourne exhibition consisted of mostly English, Scottish, Moroccan and Spanish landscapes and was a sellout. The emerging artist was now in his mid-twenties and soon to shift his concentration to painting local scenes and subjects.

In February 1915, the year in which it is believed Landscape with Hay Wagon was produced, McInnes married the still-life painter Violet Muriel Musgrave. They settled at Alphington, now an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, though at that time still largely farmland. The Alphington area and nearby Yarra Valley provided McInnes with a range of subjects that were to sustain his practice and feature among his best and most revered paintings from the mid-1910s.

Examples of the new Australian landscapes were included in the Victorian Art Society annual exhibition in May 1915. The Argus art critic eulogised over two in particular: A Virgin Bush and Near the Creek Called Cockatoo. According to the critic these conveyed ‘an exquisite sense of colour, and a rare sympathy with poetic moods of landscape.’ McInnes, he concluded, ‘has a fine notion of effective massing of light and shade and handles his paint with commendable ease and freedom … striving to achieve … an aspect of Australian landscape in a way that has not before been attempted.’(1)

In such commentaries McInnes was being positioned as a worthy successor to Australia’s blue and gold painters. His work was thought to rival that of his emerging contemporaries, Penleigh Boyd and Elioth Gruner, and continue the best traditions of the celebrated work of Australian Impressionist forebears, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts.

Although W.B. McInnes increasingly turned to portrait painting – he was awarded the first four Archibald Prizes and a record total of seven – the artist maintained that he was always happiest being in front of nature. In 1919, McInnes won the prestigious Wynne Prize for landscape painting. Concurrently, major works of this genre were collected by some of the most prominent art collectors of the day: Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer and Charles and Emily Ruwolt amongst them.

Landscape with Hay Wagon has a distinguished history. It was initially acquired by the Ruwolts, prior to being added to the Elders IXL collection that became the Foster's Collection of Australian Art in 1985. The Ruwolts tended to select paintings for their Mulwala farm that mirrored their own life and a belief that Australia's national prosperity and character was tied to manufacturing and industrial progress, as well as ‘riding on the sheep’s back’. The booming Australian pastoral economy and a new tide of manufacturing could harmoniously co-exist according to engineer and industrialist Charles Ruwolt and pastoral leasing companies such as Elders.(2)

Landscape with Hay Wagon is beautifully executed and full of light and movement. The skilful rendition of the horse as it toils to pull a load up a hill is palpable. The punctuation of the surrounding farm by haystacks set against a benevolent, green-tinged pasture and a sunlit sky is both visually appealing and highly credible.

Prominent art historian Ian Burn surmised in relation to this picture that: ‘Perhaps more than any other Australian artist of the period, McInnes gave a strength and vitality to the image with the sheer physical energy of his brush.'(3) 

Footnotes

1. ‘Victorian Artists’ Society,’ Leader, Melbourne, Saturday 1 May 1915, p.50
2. In this respect, in an intriguing 1937 Lionel Lindsay bookplate etching, Charles Ruwolt is situated against noted engineering feats and the latest in technology, a giant eucalypt and fertile pasture replete with horses, cows and sheep.
3. Burn, I., National Life and Landscapes: Australian Painting 1900-1940, Bay Books, Sydney, 1990, pp.46-47

Rodney James

Rodney James is an independent art consultant who specialises in valuations, collection management, exhibitions, research and writing, and strategic planning for art galleries and museums.

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