Eugene von Guerard: 8 works

'By so doing, he was able to obtain commissions to paint 'homestead portraits' from the squatters.'

'Born in Vienna and trained in the German Romantic tradition, he was one of a number of artists who came to Australia from continental Europe, attracted by the discovery of gold.'

'Viennese-born, and trained in Italy and Germany, Eugene von Guérard arrived at the Victorian goldfields in 1852.'

'Eugene von Guérard's North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko celebrates the awe-inspiring aspects of the Australian landscape.'

'Although Yalla-y-Poora represents one of von Guérard's most ambitious and grand homestead paintings, it was also one of the last of this genre to be executed by him.'

'Von Guérard scholar Candice Bruce suggests that during the artist's training at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf (c.1839 - c.1846) he probably saw the work of the principal German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose style and mood his work later evoked, and became familiar with treatises by the main exponents of German Romanticism, Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) and 'Novalis' (dates). The influence of von Guérard's earlier teacher in Rome, Giovannibattista Bassi - who taught in the traditions of Salvator Rosa, Poussin and Claude - also encouraged an interest in concepts of 'the sublime' and 'the picturesque' in art.'

'At the location of von Guérard's second drawing, at 4490 feet (1368 metres), the party had emerged into the subalpine zone beyond the altitudinal limit of the tall alpine ash and mountain gum, which were replaced by the adapted snow gum woodlands.'

'Encompassing the view to the north-west, seen from the head of Milford Sound, the painting also depicts the vessel on which von Guérard had travelled to the fiord, at anchor below Cascade Peak.'