Ruth Pullin shared research from her PhD thesis on Eugène von Guérard, the Austrian born landscape painter who lived at “Little Parndon” in Gipps Street East Melbourne for twenty years.
Ruth took von Guérard's places of residence as the theme for her talk. In this way we followed his travels through Europe in his early years and witnessed his developing style through the many illustrations from his sketch books which Ruth had tracked down.
Born in Vienna in 1800, von Guérard began a tour of Italy in 1826 with his father, a painter of miniatures at the court of Emperor Francis I of Austria. From 1830 to 1832 he resided in Rome, where he was involved with the Nazarenes, a group of German expatriate artists. From around 1839 to 1844 he studied landscape painting at the Dusseldorf Academy, and travelled widely.
In 1852 von Guérard arrived in Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was unsuccessful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life. He abandoned the diggings and was soon undertaking lucrative commissions recording the dwellings and properties of wealthy pastoralists.
By the early 1860s von Guérard was recognised as perhaps the leading landscape artist in the colonies, extensively touring south east Australia and New Zealand. He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail. The scientific accuracy of his work is particularly notable.
In 1870 von Guérard was appointed the first Master of the School of Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he taught for 11 years. His reputation, high at the beginning of this period, declined towards the end because of his continuing adherence to pictorial and scientific detail in contrast to the more romantic Heidelberg School style. Amongst his pupils were Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts. Von Guérard retired from the National Gallery School the end of 1881 and departed for Europe in January 1882. In 1891 his wife died. Two years later, he lost his fortune in the bank crash and he lived in poverty until his death in London on 17 April 1901.