ARTHUR STREETON
Compared to the narrative paintings of Charles Conder and Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton’s Heidelberg impressionist works were characterised by his sensitive response to the light, colour and searing heat of the Australian landscape.
Streeton attended drawing classes at the National Gallery School of Design (1882-1887), and following his introduction to Roberts in 1886, joined him and at the Box Hill camp, assuming an important role with the Heidelberg group and exhibiting forty of the 182 works included in the landmark, 9 by 5 Impressionist Exhibition in 1889.
Streeton’s depiction of the landscape and humanity’s potential to reap the benefits of its harvests, celebrated the ideals of colonial settlement and although later sentimentalised, his work remained credible in the 1880s and 1890s through his acute observation of light.
Streeton travelled to London in 1897, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1899. He returned to Australia intermittently over the following 25 years, settling permanently in Toorak, Melbourne in 1923. In 1928 he was awarded the Wynne Prize and was recognised as a ‘national institution’ of Australian art later in life.
Streeton’s work is held in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
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