AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY: Iconic Paintings

Spring Frost - Elioth Gruner [1919]

The painting depicts a small herd of dairy cows in the early morning. Gruner's most well-known painting, Spring Frost was awarded the Wynne Prize in 1919.
Spring Frost was largely painted en plein air at Emu Plains—now an outer western suburb of Sydney but then a rural area—on the farm built by Isaac Innes and inherited by his son Jim Innes. It is Jim Innes in this painting with his cattle. Eliot Gruner's painting 'Morning Light' also shows this farm. To compose the painting Gruner built a small structure on site to protect the canvas and, to avoid frostbite, he wrapped his legs with chaff bags.

The Pioneer - Frederick McCubbin [1904]

The painting is a triptych; the three panels tell a story of a free selector and his family making a life in the Australian bush. It is widely considered one of the masterpieces of Australian art.
The left panel shows the selector and his wife settling on their selection; in the foreground the woman is deep in thought. In the centre panel, the baby in the woman's arms indicates that some time has elapsed. A cottage, the family home, can be seen in a clearing through the trees. The right panel shows a young man standing over a grave. A city is visible in the background, again indicating that time has passed. It is unclear if the young man is the baby from the centre panel or a stranger stumbling across the grave.

Down on His Luck - Frederick McCubbin [1889]

It depicts a seemingly disheartened swagman, sitting by a campfire sadly brooding over his misfortune. According to an 1889 review, "The face tells of hardships, keen and blighting in their influence, but there is a nonchalant and slightly cynical expression, which proclaims the absence of all self-pity ... McCubbin's picture is thoroughly Australian in spirit." The surrounding bush is painted in subdued tones, reflecting his somber and contemplative mood.
The artist's model was Louis Abrahams, a friend and successful tobaccanist in Melbourne who earlier supplied the cigar box lids for the famous 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition. The scene was staged near the Box Hill artists' camp outside Melbourne, but it is thought that McCubbin would have made additional studies of Abrahams under studio conditions.

A break away! - Tom Roberts

The painting depicts a mob of thirsty sheep stampeding towards a dam. A drover on horseback is attempting to turn the mob before they drown or crush each other in their desire to drink. The painting, an "icon of Australian art", is part of a series of works by Roberts that "captures what was an emerging spirit of national identity."
Roberts painted the work at Corowa. The painting depicts a time of drought, with little grass and the soil kicked up as dust.

The Big Picture - Tom Roberts [1903]

The Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia by H.R.H. The Duke of Cornwall and York (later H.M. King George V), May 9, 1901, more commonly known in Australia as "The Big Picture," depicts the opening of the first Parliament of Australia at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne on 9 May 1901.
The painting is part of the Royal Collection but has been on permanent loan to the Parliament of Australia since 1957. The work, currently on display in Parliament House, Canberra, has been described as "undoubtedly the principal work of art recording Australia's Parliamentary History.

Bailed Up - Tom Roberts

The painting depicts a stage coach being held up by bushrangers in an isolated, forested section of a back road. The painting is part of the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. and has been described by the former Senior Curator as "the greatest Australian landscape ever painted".

Golden Summer, Eaglemont - Arthur Streeton [1889]

Painted during a summer drought when Streeton was twenty-one years old, it is an idyllic depiction of sunlit, undulating plains in rural Heidelberg on Melbourne's outskirts. Naturalistic yet poetic, and a conscious effort by Streeton to create his most epic work yet, it is a prime example of the artist's distinctive, high-keyed blue and gold palette, what he considered "nature's scheme of colour in Australia". It is one of his most famous works and is considered a masterpiece of Australian Impressionism.

The cricketers - Russell Drysdale [1948]

The painting depicts three boys set among the buildings in an empty town; two playing cricket and the other watching them. The National Gallery of Australia describes the painting as "one of the most original and haunting images in all Australian art." The Sydney Morning Herald said the work is "possibly the most famous Australian painting of the 20th century."

Collins St., 5 pm - John Brack [1955]

The painting depicts office workers walking along busy Collins Street in Melbourne after finishing work for the day—"Blank-faced office workers hurry by like sleep-walkers, thinking only of the pubs or their homes in the suburbs". Brack conceived the work after reading T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land. It is considered a companion piece to Brack's earlier work, The Bar.

The Golden Fleece - Tom Roberts [1894]

The painting depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed at Newstead North, a sheep station near Inverell on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales. The same shed is depicted in another of Roberts' works, Shearing Shed, Newstead (1894). This was in keeping with Roberts' conscious idealisation of the Australian pastoral worker and landscape.

In a corner on the Macintyre - Tom Roberts [1895]

The painting is thought to depict the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt in a shootout with police at Paradise Creek.
Roberts painted the picture while staying at Newstead, a station near Inverell, New South Wales, where he also painted his other significant bushranging work "Bailed up."

Bourke Street - Tom Roberts [1886]

Roberts originally titled the work Allegro con brio. The painting depicts the western end of Bourke Street, one of the main thoroughfares in Melbourne as seen from the Buckley & Nunn drapery.
The work was painted a few months after Roberts' return to Australia in 1885, after he had spent four years in Europe. It was not displayed until 1890, and only five days beforehand, Roberts added three female figures to the lower left. Roberts was unable to find a buyer and handed the painting to fellow artist, Frederick McCubbin. 

On the Wallaby Track - Frederick McCubbin [1886]

The painting depicts an itinerant family; a woman with her child on her lap and a man boiling a billy for tea. The painting's name comes from the colloquial Australian term "On the wallaby track" used to describe itinerant rural workers or "swagmen" moving from place to place for work. McCubbin painted the work near his residence in Brighton, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne.

Wood splitters - Tom Roberts [1886]

The painting depicts three rural labourers "splitting and stacking timber for the preparation of charcoal". Roberts painted the picture from sketches made at a camp he made with Frederick McCubbin at Box Hill, then a rural locality east of Melbourne.

Shearing the Rams - Tom Roberts [1890]

The painting depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed. Distinctly Australian in character, the painting is a celebration of pastoral life and work, especially "strong, masculine labour", and recognises the role that the wool industry played in the development of the country. This is one of the best-known and most-loved paintings in Australia. Shearing the Rams has been described as a "masterpiece of Australian impressionism" and "the great icon of Australian popular art history".

Sofala - Russell Drysdale [1947]

The painting depicts the main street of the New South Wales town of Sofala. The painting won the Wynne Prize for 1947. The Art Gallery of New South Wales describe the work as "one of [his] finest paintings, and that "the painting transcends literal description of a particular place to become an expression of the quintessential qualities of an inland Australian country town". Drysdale painted the work after a trip in 1947 with fellow painter Donald Friend to the country around Bathurst, including the villages of Hill End and Sofala. 

Earth's Creation - Emily Kame Kngwarreye [1994]

It was painted in 1994 at Utopia, north east of Alice Springs. Emily Kame Kngwarreye was a senior Anmatyerre woman, who only commenced painting when she was aged about 80. In the following eight years she produced an astonishing 3,000 or more paintings; an average of one painting per day.
The swirling blues, greens and yellows evoke what Kngwarreye called the "green time", after the rains come and the bush erupts with new life in her country, Alhalkere. She painted with a 'dump dot' technique, also known as ‘dump dump’, using her brush to pound the acrylic paint onto the canvas and create layers of colour and movement.

Warlugulong - Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri [1977]

The painting illustrates the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata, together with eight other dreamings associated with localities about which Clifford Possum had traditional knowledge. It exemplifies a distinctive painting style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, and blends representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".

SOURCE: https://painting-artisan.blogspot.com/2018/03/most-famous-paintings-australia.html