ARTHUR STREETON

A Very Private Collection, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 15 June - 15 July 1990, cat. 62
Arthur Streeton and the Australian Coast, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, 11 December - 6 March 2005, cat. 43 

Views of Sydney Harbour – and especially long, panoramic views such as Athol Bay – were among the subjects to which Arthur Streeton virtually established a patent in the early years of the twentieth century. Indeed Lionel Lindsay, writing in 1919, described Streeton’s harbour paintings as ‘pictures patent’ – a vision he had discovered and made his own.¹ Streeton first visited Sydney in the 1890s and a number of narrow horizontal views, painted on wooden draper’s or milliner’s boards, date from that decade. Then, between 1907 and 1927, he painted many more views of the harbour during his visits to Sydney.² In July 1907 he wrote to Tom Roberts: 'Sydney interest is for me all in its surrounding – its fascinating, warm grey sky & yellow rock, & purple sea & long undulating shore lines & luxurious languor of expression; [it's] semi-eastern – & there's some chord for that in most of us'.³  He returned to paint the harbour again and again in 1914, 1921 and 1927, and exhibited with such success that he told Roberts on one occasion, ‘They only want their harbour’

Athol Bay is on the north side of Sydney Harbour, next to Little Sirius Cove, seen here in the foreground, where Streeton had stayed very happily at Curlew Camp when he first moved to Sydney in 1892. Athol Wharf marks the present-day entrance to Taronga Zoo, and, beyond that, the bronze arm of Bradley’s Head stretches out into the blue water. The old artists’ camp has gone – and Streeton now stayed in a hotel when he came to work in Sydney – but he has chosen a view of the north shore little changed since he lived there, with its thick cover of trees. In contrast, the hills of the eastern suburbs in the distance are much more developed. So much did Streeton enjoy this view that he painted a companion work, Evening, Sirius and Athol Bay, shown in Melbourne in 1927 (private collection). Here, in Athol Bay, all is sunlight, its golden sparkle and white sails reflected in the balmy sea; whereas the silvery calm of evening settles over Evening, Sirius and Athol Bay, crowned with the splendour of a full pale moon. Having originally used drapers' boards through economic necessity, Streeton now found that the distinctive narrow format suited his subject matter perfectly. As he explained to Roberts, nearly all of his Sydney panels were completed in one sitting, with just ‘a slight caressing of them indoors, & framing’.⁴

1.    Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Arthur Streeton in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994, p. 155; quoting Lindsay in The Art of Arthur Streeton (special number of Art In Australia), 1919.
2.    Eagle, op. cit., p. 153.
3.    14 July 1907, in Galbally, A. and Gray, A., Letters from Smike: The letters of Arthur Streeton 1890-1943, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989,  p. 107.
4.    5 October 1907; in op. cit., p. 109.