Department of Youth
While
artistic practice might have moved on, the image of the landscape
remains a powerful one. Perhaps with concerns over climate change
growing, the genre will have a revival as people come to appreciate
the majesty of the natural world. But the glories of the past
remain the most enduring, and popular, examples of landscape painting.
Landscape painting had its heyday in the 19th Century,
when it proved a potent source of inspiration for artists. Opening
this month, the National Gallery of Australia presents what it
says is the most comprehensive survey of 19th century landscape
paintings ever assembled in Turner to Monet: the triumph of
landscape.
The exhibition features more than 100 landscape
works by many of the greatest artists of the time. Turner
to Monet provides a panoramic (pardon the pun) survey of
the genre from its early predominance in Britain to extraordinary
Romantic manifestations in Germany, France and the rest of Europe
throughout the 19th Century. Turner to Monet also demonstrates
the spread of landscape painting to new territories in Australia
and the United States, where European artists extended the Western
tradition. Paintings by some of the world’s best known and
most popular artists are included in the exhibition: JMW Turner,
John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne,
Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet among others.
It also features some lesser known and sometimes overlooked German,
Swiss and Scandinavian artists; as well as popular Australian
artists Eugène Von Guérard, John Glover, Tom Roberts
and Arthur Streeton.
Ron Radford, director of the National Gallery believes
the exhibition affords “a once in a lifetime opportunity
to see works of art which have never been seen together in Australia
before”. “You won’t ever see works by all these
artists together again as there isn’t a single collection
in the world that has this whole gamut of 19th century landscape
art,” he added.
Works of art in the exhibition are drawn from some
40 collections around the world including the Tate and the Royal
Academy of Arts in London, the J Paul Getty Museum in California,
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Kröller-Müller
Museum and the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands.
Turner to Monet opens at the NGA on 14 March 2008.
David Edwards
