Grace Cossington Smith was sixty years of age when she painted After fire 1952.  It is one of a group of similarly themed landscapes that she produced close to her family home on Sydney’s upper north shore. After spending the previous three years in Europe, she had returned to Turramurra to be confronted by the…

The artist’s home c.1909 belongs to a period of Clara Southern’s work when she was being hailed as one of Victoria’s leading artists. It was produced following her relocation from Melbourne to Warrandyte, a place where she was to live and work for the rest of her life. The painting depicts the cottage, detached studio…

Arnold Joseph Victor Shore, artist and critic, was born on 5 May 1897 at Windsor, Melbourne.  At aged 12 he joined a Melbourne firm of glass merchants where he worked for more than twenty years, principally as a designer of stained glass. Also working at the same firm was the artist William Frater, who became…

Much is known and has been written about Sir John Campbell Longstaff. He was born in Victoria in 1861, and although at times he worked on the land around Shepparton, his passion was art. Much to the chagrin of his father, he attended the National Gallery School in Melbourne and won the first travelling scholarship…

Joseph Backler was born in 1813 in England and was transported to Australia aboard the convict ship Portland 18 years later for forging cheques. He was the son of a painter and chose painting as his profession when arriving in Australia. His early work concentrated mainly on landscapes, and in 1843 Beckler was advertising his…

Conrad Martens was Australia’s first professional artist. At the age of sixteen he began his art study in London, ending a banking tradition in his family that stretched back to the fifteenth century. Martens left England onboard the Hyacinth headed towards India, but changed ships to work as an artist on the HMS Beagle. He…

Louis Buvelot arrived in Australia in 1865 as an accomplished painter with a strong reputation in Europe. Following his studies in Switzerland and Paris in the early 1830s, Buvelot spent eighteen years working under the patronage of the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, who had provided him with a studio and purchased his work….