::Lake Gnotuk : Eugene von Guérard (1811-1901) : Oil



Eugene Von Guérard Biography

The Austrian-born painter Eugene von Guérard is regarded as one of Victoria's great landscape artists. His paintings are noted for their meticulous attention to detail, as well as a certain romantic picturesqueness.

From the National Gallery of Victoria education kit:

"von Guerard began his artistic training. From c. 1839 to 1844 he studied landscape painting at the Düsseldorf Academy, Germany.

On von Guérard's arrival in Victoria he immediately set off to Ballarat in search of gold, but after sixteen months he had little success. He then settled in Melbourne and by the 1860s was considered Victoria's foremost landscape artist. He remained in Australia for nearly thirty years and during this time undertook many remarkable sketching tours of most of south-eastern Australia as well as New Zealand...

...In an unpublished letter to the Melbourne Newspaper the Argus in 1870, von Guérard wrote the following, referring to himself:

...his careful painting which he executes with the greatest desire to imitate nature so well as in his power, not only in an elaborate copy of her details, but shall do his best to catch now and then a glimpse of the divine poetical feelings which the autor [sic] of the kind article is so much wanting in his works..."



von Guérard Links:


National Gallery of Victoria bio

Artistsfootsteps.com bio

Ronald Coles Galleries bio