SYDNEY LONG Australian, 1871-1955

The Sobraon, built in 1866 of teak and iron, was the largest composite sailing ship ever and one of the finest clippers. She worked the England-Australia run. In 1891 she was sold to the New South Wales Government as a training ship for ‘delinquent boys’ and from 1912 became the Australian Navy boys' training ship. ¹ She was sold in 1927, moored in Berry’s Bay and finally broken up in 1941 - not long after Sydney Long painted this view.

In the words of his biographer, Joanna Mendelssohn, ‘Long’s later preoccupations were not so much concerned with structure as the quality of light… His paintings of the 1930s and 40s are largely concerned with the relationship of light and water’. ² From 1933 to 1949 Long served as a trustee at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (though he detested the modern movement which was increasing represented there). He was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1938 and 1940; and the gallery honoured him with a retrospective exhibition in 1941.

1.  Bostock, J., Australia's Ships of War, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1975; she was later called the Tingira.
2.  The Life and Work of Sydney Long, Copperfield Publishing, Sydney, 1979, p. 117.