LAURAINE • DIGGINS • FINE • ART Collectors’ Exhibition 2017 3 June – 29 July 2017 58 | Lauraine Diggins Fine Art | Lauraine Diggins Fine Art Collectors’ Exhibition 2017 3 June – 29 July 2017 Published by Malakoff Fine Art Press 5 Malakoff Street, North Caulfield Victoria, 3161, Australia Telephone (+61 3) 9509 98555 Email: [email protected] Website: www.diggins.com.au First published 2017 This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be directed to the publisher. © Malakoff Fine Art Press Catalogue record for this publication is available from the National Library of Australia. ISBN: 978-0-9578878-8-6 All unattributed texts are compiled by Ruth Lovell Editor: Lauraine Diggins Photography: Mark Ashkanasy Catalogue design: Anton Banulski Printing: Adams Print FRONT COVER FREDERICK RONALD WILLIAMS Waterpond in a Landscape III 1966 oil on canvas 152.5 x 122 cm signed lower centre left: Fred Williams INSIDE COVER FLAP THOMAS CLARK Twin Falls on the Murrumbidgee (detail) oil on canvas | Lauraine Diggins Fine Art | 55 LAURAINE • DIGGINS • FINE • ART Collectors’ Exhibition 2017 3 June 2017 – 29 July 2017 LAURAINE • DIGGINS • FINE • ART 5 Malakoff Street North Caulfield Vic 3161 Email: [email protected] Gallery Exhibition Hours: Telephone: (+61 3) 9509 9855 Website: www.diggins.com.au Tues - Fri 10am – 6pm, Sat 1pm – 5pm EUGENE von GUÉRARD 1811 - 1901 Evening After a Storm, Near the Island of St Paul’s 1854 oil on canvas 45.5 x 75.5 cm signed lower right: Eugene von Guérard fec. Melbourne 1854 Exhibited: that is connected to the ocean by a narrow of which we rose, to be dashed into the abyss Public Lottery, Mechanics Institute, Melbourne, channel; whether von Guérard, who had made the next moment. A terrific hailstorm raged, 1 February 1855, Evening After a Storm, Near the extensive studies of volcanic subjects in Europe, and waves broke on the deck with a shattering Island of St Paul’s, no. 11 was aware of the volcanic character of the island violence... The storm has continued all through is unknown. Three years later the eminent the day, but the early morning saw it at its height. Related Work: German geologist, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, The chaos both on deck and in the cabin is Conrad Martens 1801 - 1878 (The Island of with whom von Guérard subsequently indescribable. 4 Saint Paul) watercolour 30 x 42 cm established a long-standing association, studied and mapped the island as part of research Here waves crash over the deck and the crew Von Guérard’s dramatic marine picture, Evening undertaken by the Austrian Novara expedition. desperately attempts to haul in the canvas After a Storm, Near the Island of St Paul’s, was sails. Every detail of the ship, its rigging and painted in 1854 when the artist’s memories of Von Guérard painted this work at a time when the actions of the sailors, has been recorded in his own voyage from Gravesend to Port Phillip the Island of St Paul was in the forefront of meticulous and accurate detail, the result of the in late 1852 on the Windermere– on which he public consciousness. People had either seen it artists’ observant eye and the sketches made on experienced a ‘terrible’ storm – were still fresh. first hand on their own voyages to Australia, his voyage out. There are eight tiny figures visible The hazards of such a journey took on a renewed or read about it in contemporary newspaper on the foremast, another climbing the rigging, and personal reality for the artist in 1854 as he reports. On 3 July, 1854, just ten days before and two on the stern, all working frantically to awaited news of the Guyon, the ship carrying Louise arrived, The Geelong Advertiser and guide their vessel to safety in this battle with the his fiancée Louise Arnz from Düsseldorf to Intelligencer published ‘The Island of St Paul’s’, elements. The drama of the moment is registered Melbourne: Louise arrived safely on 13 July 1854 in which Captain Hall reported how ‘every in the intensity of the palette, the saturated and they were married two days later. eye’ watched carefully for any shipwrecked egg-yolk- yellow of the sky and the red of the seamen on the island as they sailed past –and garments worn by the survivors, flashes of colour While von Guérard’s first fourteen months in were amazed to discover four men who had that stand out like beacons against the deep Australia were spent on the Ballarat goldfields, lived there, by choice, for the past six and a green of the darkening sea. Von Guérard’s own his intention in coming to Australia was, and had half years. In December 1853, an account of experience of being at sea is vividly evoked by always been, to pursue his career as a landscape the wreck of the Meridian, which occurred in the sense of undulating movement, the airiness painter. He kept his sketchbooks close to hand August 1853 on the coast of the neighbouring of the composition and in such details as the throughout the voyage and on the goldfields. Amsterdam Island, appeared in The Morning wheeling seabirds and, most extraordinarily, the Only a handful of the drawings from the book Chronicle (London). It was written by one of the shadowed forms of two dolphins to the left of he used on the Windermere have survived; those 108 survivors (three passengers lost their lives), the boat. 5 that do include precise and detailed studies of Alfred Lutwyche, whose A Narrative of the wreck ships, including one of the Windermere itself, of the Meridian, on the island of Amsterdam’, was The location of this important picture, one sketches of waves and cloud studies annotated published in Sydney in 1854. of only four known marine paintings by von with descriptive colour notes. 1 Two paintings Guérard, has been unknown since 1855. It came were inspired by his experience of the voyage to Von Guérard’s Evening After a Storm, Near the to light in 2013 when it was put on the market Australia, the current work and Coast near Cape Island of St Paul’s, painted in his first year as a by a collector in Sweden. 6 It will be shown in an Town 1854, both of which he offered for sale dedicated artist in Australia, reflects the depth exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, to open in a lottery of paintings held in January 1855, of his European experience and training. He in March 2018, which will explore von Guérard’s a time when he needed to secure his financial had spent twelve years sketching and studying career as a travelling artist. position. 2 He was yet to establish his reputation in Italy, had visited the great art galleries of in Melbourne, however that did not take long. Europe and studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, Dr Ruth Pullin By 1858 he was acclaimed as ‘decidedly the then one of the leading academies in Europe. landscape painter of Australia’. 3 That experience is evident in the compositional 1 These drawings are held by the State Library of Victoria. sophistication of this work. As in Géricault’s For further information see Ruth Pullin, ‘Not lost, The Island of St. Paul’s, near which the dramatic great Romantic shipwreck subject The Raft of just hiding: Eugene von Guérard’s first Australian events portrayed in this painting are envisaged the Medusa, 1818-1819, it is the plight of the sketchbooks’ in John Arnold (ed.), The La Trobe Library as taking place, is a small island (an area of survivors in the boat that first captures our Journal, nos. 93 -94, Melbourne: State Library of six square kilometres) that rises in the Indian attention. From here we are drawn into the Victoria Foundation, 2014, pp. 4-21. Ocean, about half way between the Cape of Good centre of the composition by the rowboat from 2 TheArgus , Melbourne, Saturday 30 December 1854, p. 3. Hope and the west coast of Australia. It is one which we follow the line of sight of the figure 3 [James Smith], The Illustrated Journal of Australasia, of the most remote islands in the world, situated waving towards the ship. The heaving movement Vol IV, January to June, 1858, p.35. about 3,000 kilometres from any other landmass of the sea is evoked by the diagonal trajectories 4 Johann Joseph Eugene von Guérard, A pioneer of the except for neighbouring Amsterdam Island, set up by the rowboat, the steeply angled ship fifties: leaves from the journal of an Australian Digger, about 80 kilometres away. Not surprisingly, it (moving in the opposite direction), the waves, London, pp. 7, 8. State Library of New South Wales. was a significant landmark for passengers on the angled shape of the island and the direction 5 The Island is an important breeding site for sea birds, this long stretch of open sea and, prior to the use of the clouds. It is a work that speaks of von including some rare species. of chronometers and lunar observations, it was Guérard’s lived experience, as described in his 6 See The Age, Saturday 20 July, 2013. used by sailors to check their latitude. Louise diary entry for 4 December 1852, twenty days The author acknowledges the contribution made by “The drama of the moment is marked it on the world map she used to plot her before the Windermere dropped anchor at Michael Varcoe-Cocks to research on this work.