Page:The art of Arthur Streeton .. (IA artofarthurstree00stre).pdf/89

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ARTHUR STREETON'S AUSTRALIAN WORK BY LIONEL LINDSAY

NATIONALISM,

though

it is

integral part of great art.

not an essential, is often an The Soul of Spain has been

The wonderfully expressed by Velasquez and Ribera. oppression, of burden the lifted Dutch, once they had In Millet portrayed their native land in a fashion unsurpassed. though Turner, was summarized the whole peasantry of France. to the faithful he ranged Europe for subject matter, yet remained cosmopolitan atmosphere of London; he was romantic and dreamer of dreams. Constable still remains the great Englishman and the national painter. In his inspired rendering of the scenery of his birthplace, the Suffolk farms and vales of Essex, Constable, by his intensity of purpose and passionate sincerity, discovered

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countrymen what we recognize as typical of England of England and no other place; just as another great national artist, Hiroshige, epitomizes the peculiar and essential beauty of

to his

Japan.

We

waited long for our national painter, and us we failed to recognize this aspect of among worked whilst he have given us, however, a sense of years Twenty-five his genius. see in the landscapes of Arthur can we to-day perspective, and Kendall, genuine originality, Henry of poetry Streeton, as in the in Australia

a quality of race, the inspired vision of the native-born. art, particularly for that brand I hold no brief for nationalism in in Germany, which is and patented in the United States and, at its best, self-consciousness, nothing but a form of priggish unconsciously artist the when But commercial Chauvinism. land, then it is a native his makes something representative of

matter of congratulation for his countrymen. There is a gaiety, a lightness, in Streeton's work which is in the Australian sunlight itself, and has been expressed by no other It is the expression in paint of the goodness of being alive artist. Actually, it is the first truthful and in this f^ne land of ours. beautiful rendering of the light and colour and tone of Australia. Marcus Clarke, a pure cit, and one who ever hungered for the fleshpots of London, created a legend about the "weird