Page:The art of Arthur Streeton .. (IA artofarthurstree00stre).pdf/15

 INTRODUCTION

BY JULIAN ASHTON

N the early part of 1890 the late Mr. E. L. Montefiore and I visited Melbourne by direction of the Trustees of the N.S.W. National Gallery to inspect a collection of British art in the Exhibition Building, and make purchases if we deemed it advisable. We cordially agreed on the acquisition of Melton Fisher's "Venetian Cafe," but differed as to the advisability of purchasing "Oyster Fishing—Essex," by E. Waterlow, R.A., priced at £250. No decision had been reached when we left the Building, and I was returning along Collins Street to my hotel when I met the late Fred. McCubbin who asked me to visit a show of the Victorian Artists' Society, on Eastern Hill. "There is," he said, "a picture by a young man named Arthur Streeton, a lithographer, which will, I think, greatly interest you." I went with him and saw the picture. It was a fine performance and was valued at the modest sum of seventy pounds.

Next morning, when I met him at the Exhibition Building, Mr. Montefiore again urged the purchase of "Oyster Fishing—Essex." After some demur I suggested a compromise: if he would agree to the purchase of Streeton's picture, I would fall in with his views about Waterlow's. We went together to the Eastern Hill Exhibition, and my proposal was accepted. The result was that the National Art Gallery of New South Wales became possessed of "Still Glides the Stream and Shall for ever Glide," which, though it lacks the brilliancy of Arthur Streeton's later manner, is, I venture to say, one of his most typical and poetical Australian pictures.

It was shortly after this that Streeton came to Sydney. Tall, slim, blue-eyed, with the faint promise of a golden beard, full of jests, and tags from Shelley and Keats, he took his place among us, a devotee under the spell of Sydney and its beautiful Harbour. With amazing industry, and an ever-increasing facility, he produced a variety of studies, all distinct and clear-cut cameos of the bays, the foreshores, the headlands and their reflections, and all bearing a truthful suggestion of Australian foliage and colour which remains almost unrivalled up to the present time.