JAN HENDRIK SCHELTEMA 1861-1938

Oil on canvas
Signed lower right; bears title on frame plaque

PROVENANCE
K. Saunders (label on the reverse)
Christie's, Melbourne, March 1978
Private collection,
Melbourne Jan Hendrik Scheltema was born at The Hague and studied at the Brussels Royal Academy before emigrating to Australia. His atmospheric paintings of farm animals in the Australian landscape became popular around the turn of the century and he exhibited with the Yarra Sculptors Society as well as the Victorian Artists' Society. In 1895, when Scheltema was president of the VAS, a reviewer for Table Talk wrote: 'Mr J. H. Scheltema is still true to his cattle creed. Nobody can paint cattle as well as he does, and he wisely keeps to that in which he excels... An exhibition without one of Mr Scheltema's clever cattle studies would be like a lock without a key'. (1)
Like his contemporaries Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin, in their 'national' subjects of the 1890s, Scheltema was interested in the daily life of Australia's pioneer generation: timber-getters, bullock-train drivers, drovers and herdsmen were all subjects of his art. Dairy cows were first introduced to the Gippsland, in eastern Victoria, around 1836 and dairying became the chief industry - with around 400,000 head of cattle in the region by the 1890s. Here in Early Morning Start, Gippsland he depicts a herd of cattle resting by a river with two young companions. The girls are doubtless helping, ready at daybreak, with the morning milking: for machine milking was only introduced on Australian dairy farms around 1900. Bright sunshine steals across the hills from the east, lighting the well-watered pasture under the gum trees. This is one of the artist's most appealing paintings, combining an element of narrative with gentle impressionist technique.
(1) 'Victorian Artists' Exhibition', Table Talk, Melbourne, 20 September 1895, p.6.