About this work
English painter John Glover emigrated to what European settlers called Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Lutruwita/Tasmania, at the age of sixty-three. Along with depictions of local scenes, Glover found there was a ready market in Van Diemen’s Land for paintings of European views. These were either copies of scenes he had painted in Britain prior to immigrating to Australia, or were worked up from drawings from his British sketchbooks. A mountain torrent is thought to be a replica of one of the Welsh or Lakes District views Glover had exhibited in England in the 1820s.
A mountain torrent had been reframed in a loosely Louis XIV style frame made of composition and timber, with a patinated false gold surface (see image above). The decision to reframe the painting reflected an increasing awareness of the frames used on paintings by John Glover augmented by the exhibition that toured Australia in 2004.
The new reproduction frame was based on a frame bearing the stamp of William Wilson in a private collection, and similar frames in the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart. Two reproductions of this frame were made, the other used on Glover’s The River Nile Van Diemen's Land, from Mr Glover's farm (3359-4).
Moulds of the ornaments were taken from the Wilson frame in the private collection mentioned above and the Wilson frame on Mount Wellington with Orphan Asylum, Van Diemen's Land, in the NGV collection.
The painting was cleaned in 2011.
Wooden chassis with cast composition moulding. Surface gilded and toned.