Warrenheip Hills near Ballarat

Eugene von Guérard’s goldfields journal chronicles the vicissitudes, disappointments and hardships of his year at the diggings in Ballarat, Australia. It also records his response to the Australian landscape and flora and fauna. On 11 January 1853 he wrote: ‘Along the route the vegetation was of much interest – wattle, she-oak, honeysuckle, eucalyptus, etc, all quite new to me.’ And on 13 March 1853 he wrote: ‘Have done a wonderful walk to Warrenheip Hill, through miles of forest. Saw many magpies, black cockatoos, parrots, etc. Much relished the exquisite clear water of Leigh Creek, the first I had tasted for a long time, such a thing being unobtainable at the diggings.’

Von Guérard depicts such a landscape in this painting, one of his first Australian works, painted in Melbourne after he abandoned his mining career. It shows the successful transplantation of his art to Australia, and the harnessing of his German Romantic style and technique to the task of depicting a landscape that was in many ways the antithesis of the European views of his youth and early middle age.

Text © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia