Conrad Martens – Campbells’ Wharf (Gallery 4A) – Also Article in Spring Artonview
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Conrad Martens – Campbells’ Wharf (Gallery 4A) – also article in Spring artonview Conrad Martens was the finest artist working in Sydney - from his arrival in 1835 till his death in 1878. Although a skilled painter in oils, his greatest work was executed in watercolour. Many of the works produced by Martens were commissioned, and depicted the residences of the wealthy in picturesque settings. The watercolour painting Campbell’s Wharf, 1857, is one of his most ambitious works. The painting was purchased (it may have been commissioned) by John Campbell from the artist on 2 April 1857 for £20 and has remained in family ownership until now. The view encompasses the Sydney fortunes of the Campbell family. On the right is Campbell’s Wharf and warehouses that stretched along the west side of Sydney Cove. On their left are the old Campbell residence and the new Mariners Church. In the centre of the painting is the four storied Miles Building, and to its left on the skyline the Cumberland Place buildings. All this is viewed through a jumble of the trading vessels, the source of the Campbell family wealth. But the painting is far more than a depiction of maritime industry and family property. Martens was well versed in the ideas of the Picturesque and in his lectures singled out J.M.W. Turners Liber Studiorum as a book to be studied. Indeed the composition of Campbell’s Wharf, with the sun setting behind the buildings on the high ground, silhouetted against the pink sky, is particularly Turneresque. Sydney is transformed from a provincial trading town into a poem of limpid light and colour. This is a major painting by Martens, and will give a new dimension to our collection of Sydney Colonial art from Sydney. The work is presented in its original gold frame. Gallery 4A: Robert Russell – South head lighthouse (Port Jackson); – Governor’s bathing House, Domain Robert Russell was born in London in 1808 and studied with Edinburgh architect William Burn for worked for 5 years after which he worked for the architecture and surveyance firm, Abraham & Donthorne. Russell’s first experience in surveying – which was later to become his primary means of employment – was with an ordnance survey in Drogheda, Ireland. Before he left for Australia in 1832 Russell spent a year working for eminent architect John Nash on Buckingham Palace. He arrived in Sydney in 1832 to work as a surveyor and began lessons with Conrad Martens in 1835, which inspired a series of views and formed a friendship that would continue into the late 1860s . In 1836 Russell travelled to Melbourne to survey Port Phillip Bay and its surroundings, and during a delay for his own project he produced a preliminary ‘check-board’ plan of the Melbourne settlement. This was later used as the basis for the Robert Hoddle’s official survey plan for the city of Melbourne. As the result of his opposition of the administrator, Captain Lonsdale’s, plans to raze the casuarina forest on Batman’s Hill to make way for Spencer Street Station, Russell was replaced by Hoddle. He returned to Sydney in 1837 where he remained for one year, but was subsequently appointed Clerk of Works which required him to return to Melbourne. Russell resigned from public service in 1838 and established himself as a private surveyor, architect and artist. He was one of the earliest architects in Melbourne and amongst his most well known designs in Melbourne are the St James Church of England and the first Bank of Australasia. Russell worked in numerous mediums during his lifetime, including painting, etching, drawing, French translation, writing poetry and several unpublished novels. He was recognised as an authority on old master paintings and a print collector and also experimented with early forms of photography including the daguerreotype and heliogravure. He died in Melbourne in 1900. Robert Russell was an artist who mastered many mediums, not only was he an apt sketcher he was also an amateur photographer, architect and surveyor, etcher, lithographer and carver. In his early career Russell was trained as an architect and surveyor, his prints and drawings often referenced architectural subjects and ideas. He was noted by George Tibbits in The Dictionary of Australian Artists, Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, as an important sketcher and watercolourist due to his accurate accounts of Melbourne during the mid 1800s. French exploration prints – corridor outside Gallery 4A During the early 19th century, the French exhibited an increased interest in the exploration of the Pacific region to further trade opportunities and geographical knowledge. Natural history and landscape artists often sailed with explorers, to document flora, fauna, ethnographical and geographical data. These lithographic prints were made at a time when this technique was at its most popular in France. These prints are primarily detailed images of geographical and natural history features seen during various exploratory voyages to the Pacific. The images capture the spirit of scientific investigation and inquiry that prevailed during this period of exploration, through the careful observation brought to all views of coastal landscapes, physiognomy and biology. Charting the unknown territories of the Southern hemisphere and furthering the economic prospects of France were the guiding forces behind these voyages and the ship-board artists documented lands and people about whom very little was known. Most of these works were made during 19th century French expeditions to the Pacific region, by a range of landscape, marine and natural history artists who were employed to document the geographical, biological and anthropological findings. Jules Dumont d’Urville (1790 -1842) was a French navigator who made two voyages of exploration to the Southern Hemisphere. The first was during 1826-29, when he was commissioned to chart accessible Pacific islands including the coast of New Zealand, New Guinea, Tonga and Fiji in the corvette, L’Astrolabe. During this voyage Louis Auguste de Sainson (1801- 1887) was the expedition’s official artist, and Barthelemy Lauvergne (1805-1871) recorded biological specimens. At the end of the expedition d’Urville presented a large collection of natural history specimen to the museum in Paris, including 3350 drawings of animals, many of which were unknown. He was instructed by King Charles X to publish an account of his trip, which totalled twelve volumes and five albums which included thirty-two plates after de Sainson. He also privately published a popular book in 1834/5, using the device of a fictional explorer, called Voyage pittoresque autour du monde. In 1837 d’Urville submitted a plan for another voyage of exploration to the Pacific Islands, however the new king, Louis-Philippe, was mindful of increasing the French presence in the Southern hemisphere and instructed him to sail as far south as the ice would allow. Between 1937-40 D’Urville captained two ships, L’Astrolabe and Zélée, on a journey that discovered the Louis Philippe, Joinville and Adélie Islands and returned via remote islands including Tasmania, New Zealand, Tahiti, Samoa, Sumatra and Borneo. Louis Le Breton (1818-1866), who was one of the most prolific marine painters of the era and was one of the finest detail-oriented painters, was the official artist for this voyage. Gallery 6C: Virginia Coventry – At/to a point (see also artist statement – sent to you through Internal Mail – we are putting up an extended label for this work which quotes from this) Although painting and photography form the basis of Virginia Coventry’s practice, her drawings from 1965-2000 highlight the key role that drawing plays in her oeuvre. Coventry received early recognition for her conceptual photographic works, which later evolved into abstract expressionist paintings which combined organic geometry with nuanced colour. Many of Coventry’s paintings in particular evolved from experiments with drawing and collage. During the 1970s Coventry experimented with photocopies and there are few drawings from this period. By the 1980s she had begun to work in series, sequences and suites, and her interest in colour and light continued to expand. The grid began to emerge more emphatically in Coventry’s drawings from the 1990s. In Coventry’s delicate silverpoint works of 1997 and gouaches of 2000, she investigates the concept of rhythm and constant movement balanced against the geometric structure of the grid. She plays with the idea of the body as a precision instrument and the balance between precision and risk. These later works on paper works epitomise the artist’s intuitive approach to both drawing and painting. Gallery 6/7 corridor (on lift doors): Sandra Selig – Universes (1-3) Universes (1-3) highlights Sandra Selig’s continuing fascination with visualising space using ephemeral materials. The Brisbane-based artist is best known for her site-specific installations in which she stretches, wraps and twists kilometres of thread around and through gallery spaces to create shimmering optical forms. The artist views these installations as ‘a way of holding and amplifying what was already there’. Her interest in the definition of physical space through suspended forms can also be seen in Universes (1-3). For these works Selig has sprayed found spider webs with coloured or white enamel paint and then stretched the sticky threads across a sheet of black paper. Isolated against the dark background, the spider’s fragile weaving is highlighted by the paint and its structural beauty captured. These drawings form part of an ongoing series, Universes, which the artist began in 2006. Other works from this suite were exhibited in the Adelaide Biennial of Australia Art in 2008, Handle With Care, and other examples are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Queensland Art Gallery.