Australian landscape

A fine example of Conder’s highly poetic vein of plein air work painted in his last months in Australia prior to his departure for Paris, and only varying markedly from the similarly small and poetic 9 x 5 Exhibition exhibits of the preceding spring (August 1889) in its canvas support (‘… these later landscapes, dating from the last six months Conder spent in Melbourne, are nearly all oil on canvas’ Galbally, 2003, p.65). The title is taken from Rothenstein’s List (1938) and its ‘unConderesque’ prosaic nature has encouraged efforts to identify it with other known titles, as yet inconclusively.

‘Conder spent two summers at Heidelberg, the first dominated by the drought which inspired the imaginative allegories The hot wind and A Victorian idyll … exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in May 1889. As he moved into the second summer – and in spite of recurring illness – his work matured. Australian landscape (cat. no. 30), a small oil on canvas, is a highly poetic response to the area, worked broadly in terms of light and shade to suggest the reach of the valley with just the tiniest figure in the middle distance of an artist (Streeton?) at work.’ (A. Galbally and B. Pearce, Charles Conder, Sydney, 2003, p.66)

'It was not until the summer of 1890 that another prolonged stay in the country produced results comparable to those of the Richmond painting trip undertaken two years earlier, in New South Wales. This stay in the country took place at Eaglemont near Heidelberg. Conder had already spent week-ends up there in the previous summer and some of the pictures exhibited in the 9 x 5 exhibition originated at Eaglemont. Most of his Heidelberg period pictures, however, go back to the last summer which he was to spend in Australia.’ (U. Hoff, Charles Conder, his Australian Years, Melbourne, 1960, p.11)