Australia's Impressionists

de Christopher Riopelle, Tim Bonyhady, Allison Goudie, Alex J. Taylor, Sarah Thomas

Australia's Impressionists' introduces a worldwide audience to Impressionism as it manifested itself in artistic movements beyond Europe. This catalogue features over 35 paintings, including important masterpieces by Australia's leading artists, many of which have never previously been shown outside the country. In 1889 a group of artists working in Melbourne opened the '9 by 5 Impression Exhibition', an ambitious display that sought to introduce local society to their version of Impressionism. These artists - Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton - presented some 180 oil sketches. Many of these scenes of contemporary life, using a vividly coloured palette, were painted on panels, from cigar boxes, of around 9 x 5 inches, which gave the show its name. In fact these pictures owed more to Whistler, whose works Roberts had seen in London in 1884, than to French Impressionism. Drawing on a wider interest in national identity among the non-Indigenous population, Conder, Roberts and Streeton championed a new Australian landscape style. This drew on the practices of European plein-air artists, but the resulting pictures became larger and more ambitious in manner; paintings of the leisured lifestyle offered by Sydney Harbour are recorded with cheerful pride, while scenes of the bush - albeit never too far from the city - are elevated to a mode of heroic myth. John Peter Russell, a friend and correspondent of Roberts, was born and died in Sydney, but spent some 40 years as an expatriate in Europe. Russell spent his working life in the company of Van Gogh, Monet and Rodin. While his talents as a colourist made a deep impression on the young Matisse, his innovative art was only rediscovered in the later twentieth century. Exhibition: The National Gallery, London, UK (07.12.2016-26.03.2017).