A fig tree on American Creek near Wollongong, NSW

A fig tree on American Creek, near Wollongong, NSW' depicts an enormous native fig tree set amongst cabbage-tree palms and other sub-tropical vegetation, apparently viewed against the Illawarra escarpment, south of Sydney. Staying at the Fig Tree Hotel near Wollongong in late 1859, Eugene von Guérard drew the well-known nearby giant fig tree. This, together with two sketches of American Creek, provided the basis for this painting, produced in his Melbourne studio two years later.

Von Guérard’s signature placement of a figure within the landscape is positioned to promote a sense of the grandeur of nature, on both a physical and metaphysical level, giving expression to the Romantic spirit at its most intensely symbolic.