MOUNT ELEPHANT (DJERRINALLUM) BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)

Mount Elephant or Djerrinallum (240 m -790 ft) 

Australia

In Mount Elephant, 1857, oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Australia

The mountain
Mount Elephant is a  (240 m -790 ft) conical breached scoria cone formed by a dormant volcano, located 1 km from the town of Derrinallum in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It is a prominent landmark that forms the eastern gateway to the Kanawinka Geopark from the Hamilton Highway at Derrinallum. Scoria cones are small volcanoes with relatively steep sides, usually formed as the result of a single major episode of volcanic activity. Lava lakes often form in the centre of scoria cones; if the lava in such a lake breaches the side of the cone, the result is a breached scoria cone, such as Mount Elephant. There are approximately 200 breached scoria cones in Victoria.
Mount Elephant was once quarried for its red/black scoria, and evidence of the quarry is visible at the base of its cone. The scoria that was quarried from Mount Elephant was used to make many of the roads and buildings in and around the town of Derrinallum.
The volcano is thought to have last erupted between 5,000 and 20,000 years ago making Mount Elephant dormant. During early European settlement, the mountain was known as Swagman's Lighthouse. The mountain was privately owned until 2000, when it was purchased by the Trust for Nature and the local community. The aim is to revegetate the area and promote local tourism.
In the nineteenth century, an Aboriginal name for Mount Elephant, Gerinyelam, was recorded by a colonist. During European colonization in 1830s, Mount Elephant was located within the territory of a Djargurd Wurrung clan, Teerinyillum gundidj.
According to James Dawson, "The Mount Shadwell tribe and its language are called 'Kirae wuurong,' 'blood lip' with Kuurndit ["member of"] affixed for a member of the tribe. Its territory commences at the Hopkins Hill sheepwash on the Hopkins River, and extends to Mount Fyans, Mount Elephant, Cloven Hills, Minninguurt, Mount Noorat, Keilambete Lake, Framlingham aboriginal station, and up the east side of the Hopkins River to starting point."
The photographer, Fred Kruger (1831-1888) took a photograph of King Tom, a survivor of the "Mount Elephant Tribe", at Coranderrk Settlement in the Yarra Valley (see Board for protection of Aborigines Album No. 131, Museum of Victoria.). King Tom lived at Meningoort Station, about 25 km south-west of Mount Elephant, north of Camperdown and west of Lake Bookaar. His mia-mia was near the homestead, and was painted by Robert Dowling in 1856. The painting, entitled "Aborigines in a bark hut: King Tom of the Mount Elephant tribe", is in the collection of the National Library of Australia. Meningoort Station still exists in Corangamite Shire and has remained in the McArthur family since Scottish immigrant, Peter McArthur, squatted on the land in 1837.
According to the Trust for Nature, "Even well before early European settlement, the local Indigenous community, the Djerrinallum gundidj, reputedly knew Mount Elephant as Djerrinallum – meaning 'Hill of Fire'. With their presence and a local history dating back as far as 45,000 years the Indigenous peoples of the area will certainly have witnessed a few of the eruptions in the region, including Mount Elephant. Therefore, it is of little wonder that some feature prominently in local Dreaming stories."
Source: 
- Mount Elephant website 

The Painter 

Johann Joseph Eugene von Guerard was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 to 1882. Known for his finely detailed landscapes in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting, he is represented in Australia's major public galleries, and is referred to in the country as Eugene von Guerard. In 1852 von Guerard arrived in Victoria, Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was not very successful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life, quite different from the deliberately awe-inspiring landscapes for which he was later to become famous. Realizing that there were opportunities for an artist in Australia, he abandoned the diggings and was soon undertaking commissions recording the dwellings and properties of wealthy pastoralists.
By the early 1860s, von Guerard was recognized as the foremost landscape artist in the colonies, touring Southeast Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the sublime and the picturesque.  He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail.  Indeed, his View of Tower Hill in south-western Victoria was used as a botanical template over a century later when the land, which had been laid waste and polluted by agriculture, was systematically reclaimed, forested with native flora and made a state park. The scientific accuracy of such work has led to a reassessment of von Guerard's approach to wilderness painting, and some historians believe it likely that the landscapist was strongly influenced by the environmental theories of the leading scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Others attribute his 'truthful representation' of nature to the criterion for figure and landscape painting set by the Düsseldorf Academy.

In 1866 his Valley of the Mitta Mitta was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; in 1870 the trustees purchased his Mount Kosciusko shown in this article was titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko", which is actually  "from Mount Townsend". 

In 2006, the City of Greater Geelong purchased his 1856 painting View of Geelong for A$3.8M. His painting, Yalla-y-Poora, is in the Joseph Brown Collection on display at the National Gallery of Victoria.  The State Library of New South Wales in Sydney holds an extensive collection of working sketchbooks by Eugene von Guerard, as well as larger drawings and paintings and a diary. The sketchbooks cover regions as diverse as Italy and Germany, Tasmania, New South Wales, and of course, Victoria.

In 1870 von Guerard was appointed the first Master of the School of Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he was to influence the training of artists for the next 11 years. His reputation, high at the beginning of this period, had faded somewhat towards the end because of his rigid adherence to picturesque subject matter and detailed treatment in the face of the rise of the more intimate Heidelberg School style. Amongst his pupils were Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts. Von Guerard retired from his position at the National Gallery School the end of 1881 and departed for Europe in January 1882. In 1891 his wife died. Two years later, he lost his investments in the Australian bank crash and he lived in poverty until his death in Chelsea, London, on 17 April 1901.
Several paintings of mountains of Australia and New Zealand by Eugène von Guerard are published in this blog....

Sources: 

- Dictionnary of Australian Artists, Oxford University Press, 1992

- Wikipedia Eugene Von Guerard page