Exhibition celebrates Arthur Streeton’s contribution to the formation of an Australian identity

An exhibition by the renowned Australian impressionist artist Arthur Streeton (1867 - 1943) entitled Arthur Streeton: Blue and Gold will be on show at Carrick Hill, Springfield, from 25 October 2017 until 25 February 2018.

Arthur Streeton: Blue and Gold will be opened by Geoffrey Edwards on Wednesday 25th October 2017 at 6.00pm

The exhibition, which takes its name from Streeton’s statement; ‘Nature’s scheme of colour in Australia is gold and blue ...’ will highlight his depiction of land and seascapes, both in Australia and abroad.

Carrick Hill’s Associate Curator Anna Jug said, ‘The exhibition will comprise around twenty works drawn from public and private collections taking inspiration from the three paintings by Streeton included in the Hayward Bequest here at Carrick Hill.

The show celebrates Streeton’s contribution to the formation of an Australian identity demonstrating Streeton’s treatment of bush, sea, river and mountains in oil paintings, as well as in a number of his sketch studies’.

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, in 1867. Academic life did not appeal and so young Arthur left school in Melbourne at the age of thirteen and took up several different jobs. At nineteen, his creativity and aptitude for sketching led him to being apprenticed as a lithographer to a company in Collins Street.

Streeton held little interest in art theory throughout his life: as a young man he took night classes in drawing at the National Gallery School of Design, but otherwise was self-taught, experimenting with technique. It was the friendship he struck up with Tom Roberts, an artist returned from study at the Royal Academy, which had a profound influence on Streeton. He was invited to an artist camp away from the city in Box Hill, where artists were experimenting with the French technique en plein air. Impressionism had already reached its pinnacle in Europe, but to Arthur Streeton and a stream of young Australian artists, it was ground-breaking, allowing them to see and paint the Australian landscape in a new way.

Anna Jugg says Streeton’s painting, An Impression from the Deep, from the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, is an example of this. ‘The sound of the crashing waves and taste of the sea spray is almost as tangible to us as it was to Streeton as he painted it. His quick brush strokes and bold colours used during those early days painting at Box Hill and Heidelberg would lingered in work throughout his life.’

Feedback/Comments