Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) Original Pencil Drawing 15.4cm x 33.4cm

Arthur Streeton (Australian 1867-1943) Original pencil drawing on paper, circa 1900, Titled “Duke of York’s Headquarters, London”. Labelled at centre, collection Streeton family. Provenance label verso: "This drawing comes from Streeton’s London sketchbook which includes Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey, purchased from Chris Deutscher who bought it from the Streeton family. Masterpiece Gallery Hobart." Also a signed note of provenance by Harold Day (TAS), son of Christopher Day (Christopher Day Gallery, Paddington NSW). Rarely will a original drawing from Streeton become available, One for your art collection.

Dimensions

Image size: 15.4cm x 33.4cm
Frame size: 58 cm x 42cm x 1cm

Bio

One of Australia’s best known and most influential landscape painters, Arthur Streeton was a key member of the Heidelberg school of Australian impressionism – the first distinctively Australian school of painting. For many people, Streeton’s paintings defined a unique image of this country. He spent much of the early 20th century in Europe and served as war artist during the First World War, but later returned to Australia, where he also worked as an art critic. Streeton received little formal training in art beyond night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria school in Melbourne from 1882 to 1887, but his career developed after he met fellow artist Tom Roberts. Along with Frederick McCubbin, and later Charles Conder, he joined Roberts’s camps at Box Hill and Heidelberg in Victoria. Painting in the open air, they worked on representing Australia’s light, heat, space and distance. Streeton himself established an ongoing artists’ camp in 1888 at Eaglemont on the outskirts of Melbourne. In 1889 Streeton was a key contributor, with Roberts, McCubbin, Conder and others, to The 9 by 5 impression exhibition in Melbourne, which consisted of impressions of bush and city life rapidly painted on cigar box lids. After the Art Gallery of New South Wales bought his painting ‘Still glides the stream, and shall for ever glide’ 1890, Streeton moved to Sydney in the early 1890s where he painted views of the city, harbour and beaches and established an artists’ camp in Mosman, producing works such as From my camp (Sirius Cove) 1896. In search of more dramatic scenes, he travelled to the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury River. From 1890, his paintings became increasingly large and ambitious and his visions of the Australian bush became more powerful and lyrical. It was during this period that he painted perhaps his greatest evocation of the country’s light, heat and dust – Fire’s on 1891. His growing critical success culminated in a solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1896. Streeton travelled to London via Cairo in 1897, where he lived for the next three decades, with frequent return visits to Australia.

Travels to England: In 1897 Streeton sailed for London on the Polynesian, stopping at Port Said before continuing on via Cairo and Naples. He held an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1900 and became a member of the Chelsea Arts Club in 1903. Although he had developed a considerable reputation in Australia, he failed to achieve the same success in England. His trips to London were financed by the sales of his paintings at home in Australia. His time in England reinforced a strong sense of patriotism towards the British Empire and, like many, anticipated the coming war with Germany with some enthusiasm. In 1906, Streeton returned to Australia and completed some paintings at Mount Macedon in February 1907 while staying with his patrons the Pinschofs at Hohe Warte. These included the notable five feet by three feet Australia Felix (a view from Mt. Toorong) and a number of other smaller paintings. He returned to London in October. Paintings done in Venice in September 1908, including The Grand Canal, were exhibited in Australia in July 1909 as "Arthur Streeton's Venice". In Australia again in April 1914 he held exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and went back to England in early 1915.

Enlisting in the Australian army medical corps in 1915, he was appointed an official war artist in 1918. In paintings such as Villers Bretonneux 1918, he documented the Western Front, focusing on the devastated terrain rather than the drama of human suffering. Returning to Victoria in 1923, Streeton won the Wynne Prize in 1928, and in 1929 became art critic for the newspaper The Argus. He was knighted in 1937 and died at his property in Olinda, Victoria, in 1943.