Sydney Long

de Anne Gray

Sydney Long (1871--1955) was Australias foremost Art Nouveau painter and one of our major symbolist artists. He created haunting scenes of the Australian landscape. His Art Nouveau works are like reveries, an escape from the everyday. He populated the prosaic Australian bush with nymphs and fauns whose poetic world was paralled in the literature of Australian writers.Seeking an imagery which conveyed the lonely and primitive feelings of the country,he captured the soul and tenor of the Australian bush. Long also painted many delightful landscapes and cityscapes in Australia and Britain, in which he continued to demonstrate his interest in strong form. And from 1918 he became a leading printmaker, devotoing much of his time to printmaking in the succeeding twenty years.