Yarra flats

This atmospheric watercolour demonstrates Louis Buvelot’s radically new approach to the depiction of the Australian bush; a clump of trees and scrub taking precedence over the expansive Yarra Valley vista beyond. Buvelot was revered by the younger generation of artists who took up his interest in temporal and seasonal effects and in working en plein air in the settled districts around Melbourne. Australian Impressionist Tom Roberts said that Buvelot ‘began the real painting of Australia’ and his work remained popular during subsequent decades, when other colonial art had fallen from favour. This watercolour was formerly in the collection of Alfred Felton, the National Gallery of Victoria’s greatest benefactor.

Edited from text by Kirsty Grant from On Paper: Australian Prints and Drawings in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 37 and Terence Lane from This Wondrous Land: Colonial Art on Paper, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, p. 159.