Feature Story

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 around the Hawkesbury, Nepean, McDonald and Parramatta Rivers; pastoral scenes, most notably Gruner’s Emu Plains paintings (1915–19); as well as bush vistas in the Blue Mountains.

All these artists, from Impressionist to Modernist in their approaches, embraced working 'en plein air', striving to capture the distinctly Australian light and character of the landscape, painting quickly to capture it as it was before their eyes. Plein air painting played a role in the development of an emerging national identity and spirit, with many artists depicting idyllic rural scenes, conjuring a pioneering dream of a pastoral Australia and challenging early colonial perceptions of Australia as a drab ‘wide brown land’.

Elioth Gruner, 'Spring frost', 1919, oil on canvas, 131 x 178.7cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of F G White, 1939

One of the most significant paintings in 'Fieldwork' is 'Spring frost' (1919) - image above - by Elioth Gruner, a much-loved painting rarely taken off display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and for which Gruner won his second Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting. Painted on a farm in the Emu Plains, where he rented a cabin, it depicts a pastoral scene of cows and a farmer in a field, beautifully evoking the “crackling frosty sensation of early morning in the country”. [1]

Gruner is said to have risen at 5am to start work, wrapping his legs in chaff bags while he painted to avoid frostbite.

In a 'Sydney Morning Herald' review, 'Spring frost' is described as the work “of a mature artist, who is also at once a wilful child, wanting to gaze directly at the sun, to revel and roll in the sun, to be exposed to, and by, the sun.” [2]

Gruner’s family emigrated to Sydney from New Zealand in 1883 when he was a one-year-old and, after initially working as a draper’s assistant and then gallery manager for Julian Ashton, he became a full-time artist, travelling to farmlands west of Sydney from 1915 onwards to paint 'en plein air'.

Barry Pearce describes the breakthrough in Gruner’s artistic development as being when “he began looking into the light so that shapes in the landscape became dark silhouettes haloed from behind by a bright backdrop of sky”. [3]

Gruner’s 'Morning light' (1916), which is considered his masterpiece, is included in this exhibition. It is said to have been the talk of the art world for months, with art critic Basil Burdett writing:

“I do not think any picture ever painted in this country shows so lovely a quality of surface. It is jewel-like…the quintessence of his vision”. [4]

Gruner was supportive of modernist art but preferred painting serene rural scenes. Described as shy, enigmatic, even evasive, he had many friends who supported him throughout his career and personal struggles, including Norman Lindsay, to whose home at Springwood he was a frequent visitor.

Gruner is considered one of Australia’s most prominent landscape artists and won the Wynne Prize more times than any artist other than Hans Heyson.

Hilda Rix Nicholas, 'Through the gum trees, Toongabbie' (detail), c1920, oil on canvas, 65.7 x 81.9cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales. Acquired with the support of the Art Gallery Society of NSW through the Dagmar Halas Bequest 2016 © Estate of Hilda Rix Nicholas

Another significant painting in the exhibition is 'Through the gum trees, Toongabbie' (circa 1920) by Hilda Rix Nicholas, one of several female artists whose work is featured. The view through the tall trees to the crisp light of an open western Sydney landscape uses a distinct palette, with dynamic blue daubs of brushwork. The work reflects the post-war revival of the pastoral tradition in the 1920s, celebrating the restorative qualities of light and the land after the wartime experience, and was exhibited in Paris and the UK a few years after it was painted.

Born in Ballarat in 1884, Rix Nicholas studied under Frederick McCubbin and travelled overseas for many years from 1907, working for a time in a studio in Paris. She returned to Australia in 1918 after her husband was killed in action at Flers (three days after they wed), and for the next eight years Rix Nicholas travelled around New South Wales to “paint things typical of my country”. She became well-known for her nationalistic landscapes and patriotic paintings of war heroes. [5]

Sydney Long, 'Midday', 1896, oil on canvas, 102.2 x 153cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales. Purchased 1896 © Estate of Sydney Long

'Fieldwork' also includes significant works by Sydney Long, who became known for his Art Nouveau and Symbolist-inspired 'alternative vision' of the Australian landscape, drawing on mythology to create enchanting, even haunting, depictions of the Australia bush. [6] Born in Goulburn in 1871, Long lived in Sydney from the early 1890s, an art student under Julian Ashton and schooled in plein air painting.

Works such as 'Midday' (1896), and particularly later paintings such as 'Hawkesbury Landscape' (circa 1925), exude a lush sensuous approach to painting and evocation of mood through a rich colour palette and bold brushwork.

'Fieldwork' can be enjoyed as an historic artistic survey of a region’s landscapes, many long lost to Greater Sydney’s urban sprawl; and for the innate beauty of, and masterly technique displayed in, the exhibited works, with their different stylistic approaches to capturing the Australian light and landscape en plein air.

We hope this exhibition inspires you, and gives you pause to reflect on, changing perceptions and depictions of the Australian landscape.

'Fieldwork' is an Art Gallery of New South Wales touring exhibition. On display at MRAG from 28 Nov 2020 – 7 Feb 2021.

Words: Sally Denmead

REFERENCES

1 Barry Pearce, 'Elioth Gruner 1882–1939', Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1983, p.39

2 "Milking works for a moment in the sun", Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 2002, review of the exhibition Parallel Visions at AGNSW, curated by Barry Pearce.

3 B. Pearce, 'Elioth Gruner 1882–1939', Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1983, p.6

4 Cited in B. Pearce, 'Elioth Gruner 1882–1939', Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1983, p.35

5 artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/rix-nicholas-hilda

6 artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/long-sydney

SOURCES

Barry Pearce, 'Elioth Gruner 1882–1939', Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1983

Art Gallery of New South Wales website – artist profiles

Australian Dictionary of Biography (adb.anu.edu.au) – artist profiles

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the AGNSW curatorial team and writers of the source material.

Claire Martin, 'Riverbank Path – Maitland', 2006, oil on canvas, 97 x 115cm

Maitland Regional Art Gallery Collection. Donated by the artist for 'View of Maitland from the riverbank (with apologies to Jan Vermeer and View of Delft)', 2006

Did You Know?

In 2006 twelve artists, primarily studio-based, were invited to Maitland to paint the City en plein air, as viewed from the northern (Lorn) side of the Hunter River.

The artists, including Euan Macleod and Suzanne Archer, came together over two weekends, and members of the public were encouraged to wander amongst them as they worked.

Their finished works were exhibited at MRAG as 'View of Maitland from the riverbank (with apologies to Jan Vermeer and View of Delft)' and donated to the MRAG Collection.

Maitland is home to many artists who enjoy plein air painting, including Maitland Region Society of Artists members and Nicola Bolton, who was a finalist in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Prize in 2017.

'View of Maitland from the riverbank' was curated by former Director Joe Eisenberg OAM. The exhibition catalogue can be viewed at mrag.org.au

A Painted Landscape: Across Australia from Bush to Coast

By Amber Creswell Bell

This beautifully written and designed book surveys contemporary landscape painting in Australia today, profiling 50 artists and their practice.

It provides a superb counterpoint to the era of works exhibited in 'Fieldwork' and features several artists currently or previously based in the Hunter, including Nicole Chaffey, Rachel Milne and John Olsen.

Ken Done, whose exhibition is on at MRAG at the same time as 'Fieldwork', is also featured.

For Nicole Chaffey, an artist with Biripai/Gadigal heritage (profiled on page 29), painting the Australian landscape is both exciting and political. The book showcases some of Chaffey's plein air works painted in the Hunter and in the dramatic, romantic landscape of the Hawkesbury, which she describes as:

a very special place … almost otherworldly, and deeply secretive. You get a real sense of the ancientness of the land.

A Painted Landscape: Across Australia from Bush to Coast by Amber Creswell Bell (Published by Thames & Hudson, 2018) is available for purchase in the Gallery Shop for $59.99 (members receive 10% off).