EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)
Mount Tambo (1,430 m - 4,692 ft)
Australia (Victoria)
In Mount Tambo from Oemo Station, oil on canvas, 1862- National Gallery of Australia
The mountain
Mount Tambo (1,430 m - 4,692 ft) is a mountain located to the north-east of Omeo in Victoria, Australia. It lies within the boundaries of the 6,050 hectare Marble Gully. The 2,740 hectare Mount Tambo Reserve was listed on the Register of the National Estate in 1990. Rare plant species found in Marble Gully – Mount Tambo Nature Conservation Reserve include Marble Daisy Bush, Delicate New Holland-daisy, and Limestone Pomaderris. To the near north-east is Little Mount Tambo (1,227 m). The headwaters from Deep Creek, which feeds in to the Tambo River, are on the south-east slopes.
While travelling with Georg Neumayer's expedition to Mount Kosciuszko in 1862, the painter Eugene von Guerard produced a sketch Mt Tambo & Omeo Swamps 10 Nov 62 and later an oil painting Mount Tambo from the Omeo Station 1862. (see above)
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.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
