Charles Conder

Collection of William Grant Buckle (1894-1947), Sydney, purchased in the 1920s; thence by descent
Private collection, Perth
Australian and International Art, Sotheby's, Melbourne, 21 November 2006, lot 19
Private collection, Sydney; purchased from the above

Ursula Hoff, Charles Conder, his Australian years, Melbourne: National Gallery Society of Victoria, 1960, cat. 18
Ursula Hoff, Charles Conder, Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1972, cat. 8

It appears there is some overpainting lower centre approximately 4cm in length but this area does not flare under UV inspection.
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Conder's lovely little River Landscape has unfortunately lost its original title.  However, it may well have been painted near Richmond on the Hawkesbury River, where he worked in the spring of 1887 and again for two weeks in July-August 1888.  Very similar soft blue hills are seen in the distance in his The Farm, Richmond of 1888, now in the National Gallery of Victoria.  In September 1888 a reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald observed that of the several paintings Conder sent to the Art Society of New South Wales exhibition, most tended 'to be golden'.  Other critics noted 'tones of gold and purple' and 'brightness and sunshine'.  It is tempting to link the present work with A Golden Meadow on the Hawkesbury, listed in the exhibition.¹

Mary Eagle comments on a distinctive aspect of Conder's style at this time, the delicate, semi-transparent, watercolour-style of applying oil paint, seen here in River Landscape.  The whole composition is amazingly simple: the colour of the sky, the pale silhouette of the hills and the almost empty foreground.  'The technique could be Conder's approximation of the flat washes of colour in Japanese prints and paintings'.²

The painting's first recorded owner, W.G. Buckle, also owned Conder's Herrick's Blossoms, catalogue number 141 in the famous 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition of 1889 and now in the National Gallery of Australia.

Conder seems to have been particularly drawn to the wide Hawkesbury with its majestic mountain backdrop, its treed banks and sandy beaches.  He painted the small jetties, the fishermen and particularly the low tides when the flat, sandy shores were exposed.  One work in particular, River Landscape, c. 1888, seems to closely follow the Bronte studies in style and format and so probably belongs to June 1888 when he is believed to have visited the area with Ashton.  The older artist painted two major watercolours, A solitary ramble and The corner of the paddock.  Conder's small oil sketch is characterised by a preference for broad horizontal expanses broken only by a few details such as the fishing boat and the vertical notes of the fishermen's moorings and markers.  The sky is overcast and the river reflects the blue of the mountain background and the soft shimmer of the clouds in what is an uncanny foreshadowing of some of Streeton's Hawkesbury studies.

1. Sydney Morning Herald, 18 September 1888, p. 5 and 19 September p. 12; and see Daily Telegraph, 17 September, p.5
2. Mary Eagle, The oil paintings of Charles Conder in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1997, p.20
3. Terence Lane, Australian Impressionism, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2007, p. 79