S PR ING/S U MME R 2020― 21
Feature Story
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This Summer MRAG invites you to explore Fieldwork, a survey of late 19th to mid-20th century Australian en plein air painting and works on paper from the Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection. From the Hawkesbury to Emu Plains and the Blue Mountains, these beautiful works depict pastoral and bush scenes west of Sydney. Many Australian art lovers are familiar with the Australian Impressionist paintings of the Heidelberg School and Box Hill artists, such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin, depicting bush and rural scenes outside of Melbourne, and works of that era capturing Sydney’s harbour and coastline. Less well-known, and often overlooked, is the significant contribution en plein air (‘in the open air’) paintings created in the western fringes of Sydney made to Australian art.
Fieldwork brings these into focus. From large oil paintings of expansive landscapes now lost to urban sprawl, to small works on paper depicting old barns, churches, cottages and stables in areas such as Windsor and the Parramatta River, this exhibition features many significant works from the Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection. It includes work by artists such as Elioth Gruner, Julian Ashton, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Sydney Long, Grace Cossington Smith and Lionel Lindsay, surveying landscapes 10
