Rainforest, Mount Juliet, Victoria

Johann Joseph Eugen von Guérard, later simply known as Eugen von Guérard was born in Vienna in 1811. From 1826, he toured Italy learning drawing with his artist father Bernhard, court painter to Emperor Franz I of Austria, before settling in Rome until 1832. In 1852 he moved briefly to London before leaving for Victoria, Australia in August of that year aboard the Windermere in order to try his luck on the goldfields. Arriving in Geelong in December, he spent the first 13 months prospecting around Ballarat with little luck before continuing his career as a painter in Melbourne. He travelled extensively throughout Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales becoming Australia's most important romantic landscape painter of the third quater of the 1800,s.

This view of Mount Juliet was made the year he retired as the first Master of Painting at the National School of Art, Melbourne and Curator of the National Gallery of Victoria, a position which he had held since 1870, and the year before his return to Europe in 1882. His early students included such later notables as Frederick McCubbin, Thomas Roberts and Rupert Bunny.