Page:The art of Arthur Streeton .. (IA artofarthurstree00stre).pdf/141

 ARTHUR STREETON'S ENGLISH PAINTINGS BY

P. G.

KONODY

A RTHUR STREETON'S landscapes have been for many / years such famiHar features at LngHsh Art exhibitions, that

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those who are not acquainted with the biographical data of the painter's career have come to regard him as an English landscape painter who devotes himself, like the majority of his kind, to the recording of English scenery, with an occasional excursion to France, or to Venice, that shimmering pearl of the It fresh impressions. Adriatic, in search of relaxation or entails quite an effort of memory to recall Streeton's first

Unless my memory is at appearance before the London public. fault, this happened just twenty years ago, when the Trustees of the National Gallery of New South Wales organized the first comprehensive London exhibition of Australian art at the Grafton Streeton's "The Purple Noon's Transparent Light," Galleries. accompanied by nine other pictures from his brush, then came as a delightful revelation of personal vision and sound I do not mean to say that his work technical accomplishment.

upon us

had not previously figured

Royal Academy and kindred England may be affirmed to date

at the

shows, but his reputation in from 898, when he became established in public estimation as the premier exponent of Australian landscape art. sensitive landscape painter is inevitably far more subject to the influence of his surroundings than a painter of figure or With the latter, the result of tradition and "subject" pictures. training is more likely to remain permanent, wherever he may The landscape painter, who is more happen to pitch his tent. often than not self-trained, relies more on personal observation. For the portrait painter it is really immaterial whether his studio 1

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be in Sydney or in Paris, in New York or in London; his style is Not so the modern landscape painter's, formed by schoolingwhich is, or ought to be, the result of local conditions of light and It is thus not surprising that with his change of atmosphere. The domicile, Arthur Streeton completely changed his style. landscape painter par excelAustralian the been had who man