This is a summary of an excursion to the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the 7th of May 2009. Keith Patten, volunteer tour guide, talked about three different movements in Australian art from settler artists and impressionist painters to modernists. Moreover, Aboriginal art was mentioned in his approximately one hour tour. These kinds of art were described by showing some more famous the gallery’s artworks.
The first movement occurred in about 1830, when settler artists arrived in Australia from different parts of Europe such as England, France, Austria, and Switzerland. The main feature of settler’s artworks is their accuracy. John Glover, who was born in the UK in 1767 and arrived in Australia in 1831, is one example of this type of artist. He felt really sorry about aboriginal people and their way of life. Therefore, he painted the scene of aboriginal people in an untouched riverside landscape in the painting called “Natives on the Ouse River, Van Diemen’s Land 1838”.
Impressionism was the next art movement, which took the act of painting out of studio by using the effect of sunlight and also less emphasising on details. Louis Buvelot, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, and Frederick McCubbin are the most famous Australian impressionists. For example, McCubbin’s masterpiece “On the Wallaby Track 1896” shows a typical countryside Australian family, who moved from one place to another to find a job, worked hard on the land as the tiredness is seen on wife’s and baby’s faces, living in temporary places like tent, and living in poverty and danger.
By invention of cameras in the 20th century, artists recognized that the photos taken by cameras are more accurate. Consequently, the third movement that is called ‘modernism’ have changed painting by picturing faces and subjects in different ways, which cameras could not capture. Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith, Russell Drysdale, and James Gleeson are some of the most famous Australian modernists. Surrealist painting is one example of this movement in which the artist paints objects in strange way like a dream. Nightmare painting “The Sower 1944” by James Gleeson reflects the terrible danger in the World War. In this artwork, it is shown that things are going wrong by using dark colours and painting strange creatures.
Aboriginal art was covered briefly in this excursion as the main aboriginal section was closed for renovation. Aboriginal painters show their spiritual links to language in body and canvas painting by using natural earth colours. Another type of aboriginal art is bark painting, which is famous in Arnhem Land in Northern Australia.
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