Bridge in New Norfolk, Tasmania 1938

ARTHUR STREETON (1867-1943)

Bridge in New Norfolk, Tasmania 1938

oil on canvas
50.0 x 76.0 cm
signed and dated lower left: Arthur Streeton '37

Provenance:
Collection of CGU Insurance, Melbourne
Sotheby's, Melbourne, 24 November 2003, lot 14 (as Railway Bridge over the Derwent 1937)
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Arthur Streeton's Exhibition, Form and Colour, Athenaum Gallery, Melbourne, August 1938, cat.13
Exhibition of Paintings by Sir Arthur Streeton, Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, 11 - 23 January 1943, cat.15 (as Bridge in New Norfolk, Tasmania)

Reference:
Herbert, H., 'Sterling Work. Sir A. Streeton', The Argus, Melbourne, 2 August 1938, p.4
'Made Sketches, Leading Artist Charmed', Launceston Examiner, Tasmania, 21 March 1938, p.9

Estimate: $100000 - 140000

Bridge in New Norfolk belongs to a group of paintings of Hobart and the Derwent Valley that Arthur Streeton produced and exhibited in Melbourne in 1938.1

 

In company with fellow artist and critic Harold Herbert, Streeton had flown to Hobart, in Herbert’s words ‘keen to try out ‑ to him ‑ virgin landscapes’.2  The artists had been commissioned by the Tasmanian Tourist Bureau, as part of a campaign to promote Tasmania and attract Melbournians (especially anglers) for weekend getaways. According to well-known Melbourne art photographer Jack Cato, whose Collins Street studio office was a few doors down from the Bureau, well-heeled men could leave their work at Friday noon and be fishing at the lakes on the same day, using the new ‘Bass Strait aeroplane and a fast car’.3

 

It was the first time that Streeton had flown and he took a ‘particular interest in the aerial perspective offered by such an experience’.4 One of the major works of the series, Hobart 1938, even included a plane over Mt Wellington pictured in the top right-hand side.

 

Bridge in New Norfolk, adopts a more conventional view, looking diagonally across the river toward the stone and steel girder bridge, and the hexagonal form of the New Norfolk toll house, from a picturesque grassy knoll. The township is perhaps deliberately obscured from view, while the glistening blue water, fertile river banks and rolling hills all add to the sense of abundance and repose. Although by now in his late sixties, Streeton shows an obvious sense of enjoyment in painting and a wonderment of his surrounds.

 

Reviewing the Athenaeum Gallery exhibition in which this work and the other Tasmanian landscapes were first shown, Harold Herbert sensed the mastery in Streeton’s work, claiming: ‘no painter is better equipped with powers of observation and an accurate colour sense than Sir Arthur Streeton. His impressions are finely direct in execution. There is no fumbling or faltering. The sheer master of his medium is delightful.’5

 

The late 1930s proved to be a bitter-sweet time. Knighted for his services to art in 1937 and universally acknowledged as one of Australia’s best artists, Streeton had to endure the death of his musician wife, Nora Clench, in May 1938. Not long after the completion of the Tasmanian landscapes, Streeton retired to his property at Olinda, where he continued to paint a little and work in his beloved garden, until his death in 1943.

 

Footnotes:

1. Although dated 1937 on the painting, it was not unusual for Streeton to add inscriptions later on, leading to confusion and sometimes mistakes. The painting also appears to be an amalgamation of two bridges: the main bridge at New Norfolk and the Railway Crossing no. 1 at nearby Hayes. I am grateful to Rosalyn Chapman, New Norfolk, for assisting with the identification of local landmarks depicted by Streeton.

2. Harold Herbert, ‘Sterling work. Sir A. Streeton’, The Argus, 2 August 1938, p.4

3 ‘Tasmania should show her wares’, The Mercury, 12 January 1938. Cato offered a number of ideas on how the Tasmanian Tourist Bureau could best use shopfront displays in Melbourne. His suggestion that they should employ displays of ‘attractive paintings [and photographs] of Tasmanian beauty spots’ may even have led indirectly to the sponsored visit of Streeton and Herbert.

4. Geoffrey Smith, Arthur Streeton and the Australian Coast, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 2004, p.35

5. Harold Herbert, The Argus, 2 August 1938, p.4

 

Rodney James

BA (Hons); MA