Tranquil Evening, Windsor Park
Arthur Streeton
Details
- Artist
- Arthur Streeton
- Title
- Tranquil Evening, Windsor Park
- Medium
- watercolour on paper
- Size
- 22 x 32 cm
- Details
signed lower left: A Streeton
inscribed in pencil verso: Tranquil Evening, Windsor Park
Further Information
“Between June and September 1903 Streeton rented Louise Villa, in Alma Road, Windsor with the Australian artist A.H. Fullwood, painting images of Windsor Park and the Thames River.”¹
After establishing himself in Australia, Streeton arrived in London in 1897 determined to forge a career as a successful artist. Despite the numerous expatriate Australians he would have encountered in the early 1900s (including Charles Conder, Bertram Mackennal, John Longstaff, Albert Fullwood, Emanuel Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker, Rupert Bunny, Leon (Sonny) Pole, and Tom Roberts) Streeton found it a struggle to find his place in the art world of London at this time, often feeling isolated and thinking of ‘home’, although he did meet Canadian violinist Esther Leonora Clench in 1899, whom he would marry in 1908. He continued painting, submitting work for exhibition at the Royal Academy (1898 and 1904, with a painting of Windsor Castle) and the New English Art Club (1901, 1906) and absorbing the influence of Constable, Turner and the popular English landscape artist Phillip Wilson Steer, with a focus on tone and mood and colour. In Tranquil Evening, Windsor Park, the patches of bright green shine against the inky purple and blues of the approaching dusk. The sketchy trees merge from sunlit to darkened forest mass, the impetus on capturing the changing atmosphere and light more than any concern to depict individual trees.
¹. Smith, G., Arthur Streeton 1867 – 1943, National Gallery of Victoria, 1995, p. 142