Mount Olympus, Lake St Clair, Tasmania, the source of the Derwent

Son of a convict transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1830, WC Piguenit was schooled in Hobart and later worked in the Department of Lands survey office as a draughtsman. He received rudimentary instruction in painting, however he was largely self taught, making sketching and photography trips to remote and spectacular regions of Tasmania. Piguenit painted in the colonial Romantic tradition, describing nature in terms of its infinite mystery combined with a topographical essence of its features.

'Mount Olympus' is one of many works in which Piguenit painted Tasmania in terms of a sublime majesty evoked through a masterful orchestration of earth, water and sky and dwarfed human activity. It was the first oil painting acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.