Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Sweden

RELATED WORK
Capo St Vito v. Alcamo, pencil, ink and sepia wash on paper, 12.4 x 18.8cm, pg. 12 in Sketchbook III, Naples and Sicily 1834, Private collection

We gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of Dr Ruth Pullin in cataloguing this work.


Lured to Australia during the great gold rushes of the early 1850s, Eugene von Guérard stayed on in Melbourne to become one of the most important artists of the late colonial period. Appointed as the first head of the National Gallery of Victoria, he was also in charge of the Gallery's art school. His position as the leading landscape painter of his time was challenged only by the later arrival of Louis Buvelot. He travelled extensively in Victoria and into South Australia and New South Wales, making detailed drawings in his sketchbooks. These he translated, in the studio, into paintings of the Aboriginal peoples, homesteads, and panoramic landscapes of the Sublime in nature, evoking the beauty and mystery of a primeval landscape. The discovery, during more recent years, of a number of von Guérard's paintings from his important Düsseldorf years has thrown light on his studies of nature and the development of his art before coming to Australia.

'Von Guérard's practice of using a sketchbook on his travels began in the 1830s and it continued until the last year of his life. The earliest extant sketchbook was, as his methodical numbering of the books reveals, his third and it dates from 1834 when he and his artist-father Bernard von Guérard were living in Naples. In March of that year they travelled around Sicily together, each recording the journey in their respective sketchbooks and on some occasions sitting side by side to sketch the same subject. In an inscription on the inside back cover von Guérard noted with evident relief that this book was back in his possession after having been lost on the road between Palermo and Alcamo. After the near loss of this one precious book, von Guérard managed to keep his lifetime's production of forty-seven sketchbooks until his death. Carefully catalogued, and their contents methodically dated and documented, the sketchbooks had deep personal significance for him as visual – and written – diaries of the travels that defined his career. They were the foundation of his professional practice, a repository of observations, studies and compositional drawings made on expeditions for use in the studio.'1

Following Bernhard's death in 1836, Eugene relocated to Dusseldorf where his late father was born and trained as an artist. Here, he enrolled in the Kunstakademie under the tutelage of Johan Wilhelm Schirmer where he studied between 1839-1845, continuing to refer to his earlier sketch books when honing his craft. The present work, an intriguing insight into von Guerards methodology and process, dated from 1844 and inscribed 'Dülf', the subject's location shares distinct similarities to drawings of the same landscape 10 years prior, sketched during his visit to the north-western coast of Sicily with his father in 1834.

Alex Clark

1. Ruth Pullin, 'Not Lost, Just Hiding: Eugene von Guerard's first Australian Sketchbooks', The La trobe Journal, Melbourne, no. 93-94, September 2014, p.7