| The Squatter's Daughter | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | George Washington Lambert |
| Year | 1924 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 61.4 cm× 90.2 cm(24.2 in× 35.5 in) |
| Location | National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
| Website | https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=155506 |
The Squatter's Daughter is a 1924 painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. It is part of the collection of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. [1]
The painting depicts Gwendoline ‘Dee’ Ryrie, the "squatter's daughter" wearing a white shirt and jodhpurs standing by her horse in her family's farming property at Michelago, in New South Wales, Australia. [1] Lambert had met Ryrie's father Major General Sir Granville Ryrie during World War I in Palestine while working as an official war artist. [2] The horse itself was a gift to Gwendoline from Lambert. [2]
In this painting Lambert set out to take a more formal approach to the Australian landscape, looking to reduce the landscape to definite forms. [1]
[Lambert] simplified the triangular mass of the hill and sharpened its outline and counterbalanced this with the strong verticals of the trees and the horizontal streak of green grass in the lower centre. Lambert painted with tight controlled brush strokes, so that the image seems still, but lifelike, with the trees and grass delineated by a sharp, scintillating light
— Anne Grey, [2]
Lambert described his portrayal of Ryrie as "like a figure on a Greek vase" passing "gracefully across the foreground". [1]
Lambert sold the painting in 1926 to Englishman George Pitt-Rivers. The painting was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia in 1991 with the assistance of James Fairfax and Philip Bacon and the people of Australia. [1]
When the “Squatter’s Daughter” was first shown, to the best of my knowledge, only three Australian artists proclaimed its originality and truth. Such a break with suave sentiment and surface drawing met with a protective opposition – here was almost an attack upon established income. It was pronounced hard, untrue, unsympathetic. To-day we know this landscape to possess the largest local truth, supreme draughtsmanship and design, and to exhale the very spirit of Australia.
— Lionel Lindsay, [2]
The first exhibition of The Squatter's Daughter "created a stir" with its formalist approach to the Australian landscape. [1] Howard Ashton was critical of the painting claiming that it lacked emotion. Another critic commented: "The Lambert landscape, The Squatter’s Daughter, will be of unique interest … as representing a direct break with the Streeton convention" while Hans Heysen remarked that the painting was "different from anything else painted in Australia" and later that it was "an object lesson for the young landscape painters of Australia". [2]
George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses. Self-trained, Stubbs learnt his skills independently from other great artists of the eighteenth century such as Reynolds or Gainsborough. Stubbs' output includes history paintings, but his greatest skill was in painting animals, perhaps influenced by his love and study of anatomy. His most famous painting, Whistlejacket, hangs in the National Gallery, London.
William Beckwith McInnes was an Australian portrait painter, winner of the Archibald Prize seven times for his traditional style paintings. He was an instructor and acting-director at the National Gallery of Victoria
Thomas William Roberts was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
Michelago is a village in the Monaro region of New South Wales, Australia. The village is in the Snowy Monaro Regional Council local government area, 54 kilometres (34 mi) south of Canberra on the Monaro Highway. It was founded in the 1820s, on the main route from Sydney to the Snowy Mountains. At the 2016 census, Michelago had a population of 562.
George Washington Thomas Lambert was an Australian artist, known principally for portrait painting and as a war artist during the First World War.
Frederick Ronald Williams OBE was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century's major landscapists. He had more than seventy solo exhibitions during his career in Australian galleries, as well as the exhibition Fred Williams - Landscapes of a Continent at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977.
Clara Southern was an Australian artist associated with the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. She was active between the years 1883 and her death in 1940. Physically, Southern was tall with reddish fair hair, and was nicknamed 'Panther' because of her lithe beauty.
Julian Rossi Ashton was an English-born Australian artist and teacher. He is best known for founding the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney and encouraging Australian painters to capture local life and scenery en plein air, greatly influencing the impressionist Heidelberg School movement.
Anne Redpath (1895–1965) was a Scottish artist whose vivid domestic still lifes are among her best-known works.
Mildred Anne Butler was an Irish artist, who worked in watercolour and oil of landscape, genre and animal subjects. Butler was born and spent most of her life in Kilmurry, Thomastown, County Kilkenny and was associated with the Newlyn School of painters.
Vincent Canadé was an American artist born in San Giorgio Albanese, Italy. He was active during the 1920s and 1930s and is known especially for his landscapes.
Peter Tillemans was a Flemish painter, best known for his works on sporting and topographical subjects. Alongside John Wootton and James Seymour, he was one of the founders of the English school of sporting painting.
Samuel Scott was a British landscape painter known for his riverside scenes and seascapes.
Bailed Up is a 1895 painting by Australian artist 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 one former Senior Curator as "the greatest Australian landscape ever painted".
A Sergeant of the Light Horse is a 1920 painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. The portrait depicts an Australian soldier in Palestine during World War I. The National Gallery of Victoria states that the work is "recognised as an image that captured the spirit and character of the Australian soldier".
Florence Ada Fuller was a South African-born Australian artist. Originally from Port Elizabeth, Fuller migrated as a child to Melbourne with her family. There she trained with her uncle Robert Hawker Dowling and teacher Jane Sutherland and took classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, becoming a professional artist in the late 1880s. In 1892 she left Australia, travelling first to South Africa, where she met and painted for Cecil Rhodes, and then on to Europe. She lived and studied there for the subsequent decade, except for a return to South Africa in 1899 to paint a portrait of Rhodes. Between 1895 and 1904 her works were exhibited at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy.
Across the Black Soil Plains is a 1899 painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. The landscape depicts a team of draft horses pulling a wagon heavily laden with wool bales. Lambert's "best known bush image", Across the Black Soil Plains was awarded the Wynne Prize in 1899.
Anzacs Bathing is a 1916 painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. The painting depicts three Anzac soldiers bathing at Anzac Cove during the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I.
Three young men frolic in the foaming blue sea, in a break from the brutalities of battle; the light gilds and defines, in scrupulous detail, the musculature of the soldiers’ bodies
Weighing the Fleece is a 1921 painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. It is part of the collection of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
Pan Is Dead is a 1911 still life painting by Australian artist George Washington Lambert. The painting depicts "a sculpted head of Pan beside white gloves and a glass vase filled with white roses". Lambert created the bust of Pan as part of a costume for a character he played in a tableau vivant, The awakening of Pan, created in 1909 by the wife of the artist Philip Connard.
Lambert constructed a conceit in which he played upon the difference between how things appear on the surface of the canvas and how they are in reality. He abrogated the difference between the solid bust of Pan and the bunch of fragile white roses in the glass vase beside it by making the sculpted curls in Pan's hair resemble roses and by using sharply defined edges to 'sculpt' the flowers.