Sunday Arts Magazine

12 Apr 2021

She, Oak and Sunlight – Australian Impressionism and the National Gallery of Victoria Ian Potter Centre Federation Square

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She, Oak and Sunlight – Australian Impressionism and the National Gallery of Victoria Ian Potter Centre Federation Square

Australian Impressionism is a large-scale exhibition of 270 artworks by some of Australia’s most widely recognisable and celebrated artists including Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Jane Sutherland, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Clara Southern, John Russell and E Phillips Fox. Along with fan favourites, the exhibition will also present works by artists that audiences might be discovering for the first time including Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory.

Australian Impressionism will reveal the ways in which these artists worked alongside and socialised with one another primarily Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder, who formed friendships in their youth which continued throughout their lives. The group painted together at various times and in various places. Artists such as Jane Sutherland, Louis Abrahams, Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin met while studying at the National Gallery School, others, such as Tom Roberts and John Russell, were introduced while travelling in Europe. Some spent their summers painting on Sydney waterfronts, while others remained in Victoria, continuing their education at Charterisville, in Eaglemont.
> Along with the Australian relationships audiences will also be delighted to discover the influence of European artists including Claude Monet, French artist Alfred Sisley and English American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Audiences will be able to view international works throughout the exhibition including a Monet presented alongside John Russell who learnt from Monet the master himself. This influence often came from periods of study abroad in France and England which influenced the style of the Australian impressionist painters.

Another highlight from the show will be new acquisitions of works by Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory. Works by women of this period are increasingly being recognised as important, yet are often excluded from the Australian Impressionism narrative. This omission is something NGV are redressing in this collection of works by female artists and in the presentation of She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism. These new acquisitions include Iso Rae’s Young girl, Etaples; Ina Gregory’s Charterisville; Jane Price’s Bush scene; Jane Price’s Children playing in a landscape; and May Vale’s New Battersea Bridge & Chelsea Reach from Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

The exhibition opens this Friday 2 April and will be a major exhibition for NGV throughout the winter, in dialogue with the French Impressionism show opening in June.