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• Auction House:
  Deutscher and Hackett
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian + International Fine Art Auction
• Sale Date:
  02 May 2012 ~ 7pm
• Lot #:
  8
• Lot Description:
  Arthur Streeton
  1867 - 1943
  Settler's Camp, 1888
  oil on canvas
  86.5 x 112.5 cm
  signed and dated lower right: Arthur Streeton 88
• Provenance:
  Charles Raymond Staples, Melbourne, from 1888 probably until October 1891; Private collection, New South Wales; Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 24 July 1985, lot 100; The Holmes à Court Collection, Perth (label attached verso); Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Me
• Exhibited:
  Tom Roberts's studio, Grosvenor Chambers, Melbourne, 20 April 1888; Victorian Artists' Society, Autumn Exhibition, 'Grosvenor Gallery', National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, April - May 1888, cat. 16 (illus.); Centennial International Exhibition, Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, 1 August 1888 - 31 January 1889, Victorian Artists' Gallery no. 3, as 'Settler's Camp, The property of C.R. Staples Esq.'; Golden Summers: Heidelberg and Beyond, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 30 October
• References:
  Table Talk, 27 April 1888, p. 2; [Smith, J.], 'Exhibition of the Victorian Society of Artists', Argus, 30 April 1888, p. 11; Age, 30 April 1888, p. 6; Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 20 March 1925, p. 9; Moore, W., The Story of Australian Art, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1934, vol. I, p. 71; Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, self published, Melbourne, 1935, cat. 37, as 'Settlers' Camp (Tent)'; Croll, R.H. (ed.), Smike to Bulldog, Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, Ure Sm
• Notes:
  In early 1888 the two leading factions in the Melbourne art world, the older Victorian Academy of Arts and the younger Turks of the Australian Artists' Association amalgamated under the name of the Victorian Artists' Society. The inaugural exhibition was previewed on 30 April at the National Gallery on Swanston Street. Hailed by James Smith, noted art critic for The Argus as the 'best that our local artists have yet produced', he singled out three paintings for special mention - John Ford Paterson's Entrance to the Bush, Frederick McCubbin's Twilight, and Arthur Streeton's Settler's Camp. 'Three woodland landscapes, grouped together,' Smith observed, 'form a curiously harmonious panel, owing to the similarity of their subjects - and to some extent - of their treatment.'1 Smith considered Paterson's painting 'one of the best works [he] has yet given us', and praised McCubbin's 'sylvan scene' for its 'sentiment of stillness, seclusion, and repose.' Turning to Streeton, he wrote:; Mr. Arthur Streeton's “Settler's Camp”, which forms the other section of this clever triptych, is a poetical interpretation of a prosaic passage in the daily life of one of the pioneers of agricultural settlement. A free selector, who has pitched his tent on the outskirts of the forest, in Gippsland, let us say, has just lit the fire for his evening meal, and through a narrow vista the light of the departing day looks in and almost transfigures the homely surroundings of the lonely and self-reliant man.2; Streeton contributed a second painting to the exhibition, Pastoral, which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In 1888, when both were sold - Settler's Camp for £52.10.0 and Pastoral for £60 - Streeton decided to leave his position as an apprentice lithographer with George Troedel & Co. to begin a full time career in art. The exhibition had many outstanding works, engaging in aesthetic appeal and important to the history of Australian Impressionism. Tom Roberts's contribution included 'Evening, when the quiet east flushes faintly at the sun's last look' c1887, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and At Autumn Morning, Milson's Point, Sydney 1888 in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Paterson's Hauling the Seine - Halfmoon Bay is in the collection of the Bendigo Art Gallery, as also is Emma Minnie Boyd's Afternoon Tea. Jane Sutherland's several contributions included the delightfully engaging Little Gossips 1888, in the Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth. Another major work both in concept and size, McCubbin's Midday Rest 1888, is in the Lionel Lindsay Collection of the University of Queensland Art Museum. Thematically related to Streeton's Settler's Camp, Smith referred to McCubbin's landscape setting as being 'painted after the modern French methods, which seems to possess such a fascination for our young artists.' Australian subjects were to the fore, especially the landscape and narratives of the early settlers and their pioneering endeavours. Of the latter, Roberts exhibited End to a Career - an old Scrub Cutter, now lost, Alexander Colquhoun An Old Homestead, and Arthur M. Boyd To a New Home, a heavily laden bullock wagon carrying a pioneer family to a new bush settlement.; The 1880s witnessed what was seen as the birth and development of a distinctly Australian school of painting, the centenary year of 1888 being a high point. National identity was linked to the landscape with a growing admiration for the gum tree in all its varied species, as well as subjects of Australian life. They were invariably painted in the plein air manner, allowing for some larger canvases to be completed in the studio. Louis Buvelot was acknowledged as the founding figure. In later years McCubbin wrote warmly of his role as 'a forerunner'. 'Buvelot interested himself in the life around him, he sympathised with it and painted it.'; All his pictures are reminiscent of Australian life as we know it. Incidents by country road sides, weather-worn farm houses, familiar farm yards, fields in which men are working, fences and wayward Gum [sic] trees, the effect of sunlight on a tree or shadow in a forest glade. I remember as if it were yesterday, standing one evening a long time ago, watching the sunset glowing on the trees in Studley Park, and it was largely through Buvelot that I realised the beauty of the scene.3; The old order was changing, not just among those who worked the land, for on 30 May 1888 Buvelot, acknowledged by McCubbin as 'the last of the pioneer Artists', died.4 Likewise, there was a quickening in the change of public taste, as a writer for The Melbourne University Review so aptly put it - 'Genre paintings we can appreciate if they smell of gum leaves'.5 This nationalistic stirring allied itself with a concern to record the passing scene of the pioneers before it too passed away.; And yet there are some pages in our short history that might be worthy of the
• Estimate:
  A$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.