Australian Landscape Drawing 1830 – 1880

A selection of landscape drawings from the middle of the nineteenth century highlighting the development of a new style of landscape art that broke free from British and European depictions of landscape and became enormously popular in Australia at the turn of the century. Artists featured included John Glover (1767–1849), Conrad Martens (1801–1878), Duncan Elphinstone Cooper (1813–1904), Edward Latrobe Bateman (1816–1897), Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901), Louis Buvelot (1814–1888) and John James Clark (1838–1915).

Writing in the exhibition catalogue, curator Bridget Whitelaw said about the drawings selected, ‘The collection of Australian landscape drawings in the National Gallery of Victoria, while not being entirely comprehensive, does provide a means of tracing the development of this genre in the period between 1830 and 1880 and of reconsidering the contribution to Australian landscape art of its more important exponents.’