08 Apr In a foreign land

The imported tree can represent the foreign in Tasmania. The first oil landscapes that were painted of Australia by early settlers, convicts, free settlers, visitors. Steeped in European imagery and understandings. I see it noted that Tasmanian paintings – unlike those from the Mainland – rarely show Indigenous people. Von Guerard, Glover. Detailed paintings with almost botanical exactness and geographic fidelity, with order imposed where no order could be seen.  Von Guerard studied at the Dusseldorf school and worked in a tradition of German romanticism elevating a direct experience of nature into religious veneration – links back to Casper David Fredrich.

• Von Guerard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_von_Guerard)
• John Glover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glover_(artist))
• Caspar David Friedrich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich)