Arthur Streeton

Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 6 July 1983, lot 803
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

Possibly Arthur Streeton's Exhibition of Paintings, Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, 24 August - 4 September 1937, cat. 5 (as 'Three Red Gums')

Work is in good, original condition. Canvas is unlined and framed in a John Thallon frame. UV light reveals a small area of retouching in top left hand corner.
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After Streeton returned to Australia in 1923 following his commission as an Official War Artist, he travelled through Queensland, New South Wales and frequently around regional Victoria seeking inspiration for pastoral subjects for his paintings. The landscapes he executed from these field trips enjoyed considerable critical and popular support; as Mary Eagle has it 'Streeton's reputation as the pre-eminent creator of national images was its height in the mid-1920s.'¹ From 1926 – 1929, Streeton averaged two solo shows a year – one each in Melbourne and Sydney. In January 1929 his success was cemented when won the Wynne Prize, for Afternoon light, Goulburn Valley, Victoria (1927, National Gallery of Australia).

The present work is likely to be, Three red gums, was exhibited in Streeton's solo show at the Athenaeum, Melbourne in 1937 – the year he received his knighthood. It is similar to works he produced in the wet spring of 1928, when Streeton visited Mr and Mrs Lindsay-Field at their property, "Warbreccan Station", near Deniliquin. Like Red Gums, Warbrecken [sic] (1928, National Gallery of Victoria), the river red gums depicted in this painting draw their form from a broad blending of colours, with crisp impressionist highlights in the branches and foliage. While Streeton is well-known for his sheep pictures - J.S. McDonald famously wrote that his paintings 'point the way in which life should be lived in Australia, with the maximum of flocks and the minimum of factories'² - cattle are a relatively unusual subject.  The beasts in The Three Gums are similar in appearance to those wading the broken banks of the Edward River in The Billabong, Warbreccan (1928, private collection). In the present work they graze happily, unconcerned by the bank of heavy, precipitous cloud - painted in Streeton's characteristically broad, confident brushwork.

We are most grateful to Oliver Streeton for his assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. M. Eagle, The Oil Paintings of Arthur Streeton in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994, p. 161
2. J.S MacDonald, The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Melbourne, 1935