WILL ASHTON

Bloomfield's Gallery (label on reverse of original frame)

Work has some surface dirt and impact craqueleure in upper centre. Crack visible along upper centre stretcher bar. UV inspection reveals slight retouching centre right in sky and hill.
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Will Ashton was one of the most successful Australian artists of the post-WWI period.  Widely travelled and extensively exhibited in Europe, his French landscapes and Parisian street scenes were particularly popular.  The present work is, however, a local subject, one of a series of winter views in the Alps which the artist painted in the later 1920s, and which included paintings such as Kosciiusko and Smiggins' Camp, Kosciusko (both Art Gallery of New South Wales).  Kosciusko won the Wynne Prize in 1930.  Unlike those unpopulated landscapes, the present work also provideds a record of early alpine recreation, with a straggle of skiers shown in front of the then new and luxurious Koscuisko Chalet at Charlotte Pass.

Describing Ashton's 'snowscapes', the artist's friend and colleague Han Heysen wrote at the time that they 'contained that clarity of light, precise and crisp handling, which gave them a distinctly Australian character and an interesting contrast to the snow scenes of Europe and England to which he has accustomed us.'¹

1.  Hans Heysen, 'Will Ashton's Paintings', Art in Australia, 3rd series, no. 28, June 1929 (n.p.)