Balmoral Beach
Charles CONDER: artist
Beach scenes, particularly as a locus of middle class leisure were a popular contemporary subject, especially amongst painters familiar with French Impressionism. Conder’s interest in Japanese art is evidenced by the composition of this painting, with its high horizon line and structuring diagonals, which hold in balance the darkly wooded headland and the large, almost empty expanse of sand in the foreground, as well as containing the gentle sweep of the bay. There is also an overall softness of atmosphere and palette in the work (different to the bright sunlight of many of his contemporaries), which gives the painting a delicacy and sense of the transient. The fleeting is also captured by the ‘snapshot’ effect of the painting. This is a quickly captured rendering of an everyday moment (witness the figure holding up her skirt to wade in the shallows) rather than a large-scale, studio-based heroic image of nation-building that was the subject of many of Conder’s contemporaries.
Title
Balmoral Beach
Artist/Maker and role
Charles CONDER: artist
Date
1888
Medium
oil on academy board
Measurements
30.5 x 47.0 cm
56 x 73 cm (framed)
56 x 73 cm (framed)
Production place
Sydney, New South Wales
Credit line
Purchased through the Linton Currie Bequest, The Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2012
The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia
Accession number
2012/0081