This essay builds on a previous essay that focused on Jan Kolen’s article ‘Landscapes move – and challenge borders’. What makes his article special is how he builds on Denis Cosgrove’s understanding of landscape as a way of seeing the world that is presented in ‘Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea’ and, more specifically, how he exemplifies it with how people expect the world look a certain way and seek to make it look that way, if possible. This essay deals with a related matter, how people also tend to end up depicting the world in that way, even when the world doesn’t look that way.
I remember watching a documentary years ago, but I could not remember what it was. Then I managed piece together a number of clues and figure out what it was. After some searching, it turned out to be ‘The Art of Australia’. Anyway, what I remembered is that the presenter, Edmund Capon, points out in the documentary that landscape painters who sought to depict Australia ended up making it look not at all like Australia, with its unfamiliar flora and fauna, but rather European, to the point that even the mountains ended up looking like the Alps. To be clear, it is not that they entirely ignored what they saw and just simply opted to paint whatever on canvas. It’s rather that as strange as the world seemed to them, they came to paint it in a familiar way, making it less strange.
I was able to watch the documentary again. To summarize it, or, rather its first episode, ‘Strangers in a Strange Land’, many of the painters were, of course, European settlers and they indeed made Australia look like Europe in their paintings. Joseph Lysett’s art is not a good example in this regard, considering that it depicts what was and still is strange to Europeans. It’s more apt to say that his depictions are rather colonial. John Glover is a much better example in this regard. What is notable about Glover’s work is that it is notably serene, much like Lysett’s work. In Glover’s work, it seems like Australia was not penal colony, a place where people were deported and had to endure backbreaking labor. People depicted in his landscape paintings seem content with their lot, if not happy about it, making progress, taming the wild and what not.
Not all of the work was notably colonial, but rather European. Eugene von Guérard’s paintings are a good example of this. He was an accomplished landscape painter, having studied art, and ended up in Australia. His work is also rather serene, but in the sense that he was all about depicting the unsettled parts of Australia. Capon states in the documentary that von Guérard and other romantic painters of that time made Australia look like Europe. Then there’s Nicholas Chevalier. Capon points out that one of his paintings, ‘The Buffalo Ranges’, makes Mount Buffalo near Victoria look like the Aps. That is exactly what I remembered. Somehow Capon’s remark stuck with me all these years. What I did not remember is how Capon also points out that William Piguenit made parts of Australia look like the Highlands of Scotland. What is remarkable about this observation is that Piguenit was, in fact, born in Australia. The reason he ended up making Australia look like Scotland was that the person who taught him to paint was Scottish. Capon comments on these artists, noting that it seems like they “were looking at Australia through a distorted lens.” I wouldn’t call it distorted, albeit I understand what he means by this. I would say that it is rather that they simply saw the world as they were to taught to see it and couldn’t help reproducing that in their paintings.
Then there’s the matter of how the Aboriginals were depicted. Lysett and von Guérard depicted them more or less as they were, going about their lives. Glover was known as a landscape painter before moving to Australia. He never engaged with the Aboriginals and was indifferent of their treatment. He depicts them as fanciful, happy, noble savages in his mid to late 1830s paintings, as if they were still present in Tasmania, where he had settled, even though he was keenly aware of how they had been forcefully relocated to the mainland in early 1830s. This is also unsurprising, consider that this is the 1800s. Colonialism, imperialism and racism were nothing out of the ordinary back then. It would be surprising if such views on the world were not manifested in the paintings that depict colonial Australia.
It took me a while to figure out what the documentary was, but I was happy to find it. This connects well with Kolen’s commentary on how the way people see the world moves with the people. This is, of course, not to say that views cannot change as they do change, all the time, which is also something that the documentary addresses.
References
- Bryant, M., and J. Hewes. (Ex. Pr.) (2013). The Art of Australia. London, United Kingdom: Serendipity Productions / Wall to Wall Media.
- Chevalier, N. (1864). The Buffalo Ranges.
- Cosgrove, D. E. (1985). Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 10 (1): 45–62.
- Kolen, J. (2026). Landscapes move – and challenge borders. Landscape Research, 51 (3): 493–511.