Yarra Flats

Louis BUVELOT: artist

Not On Display

About the work

The Yarra flats are located near the present day suburbs of Eaglemont, Heidelberg and Templestowe, approximately 50 km east of the Melbourne CBD. For the generation of artists that followed Buvelot these were all to become important painting locations. The flats are the point where the city’s main river slowly meanders and loops back on itself, creating billabongs and wetlands. Most of the flats were cleared of native vegetation and were being used for farming by the 1850s, and a decade later the area had also become a locale where the wealthy built estates to escape the city. This area became a favoured painting location for Buvelot in the 1870s as it was both easily accessible and ideally suited to his interest in painting the quiet, unspectacular aspects of the Australian bush.
Yarra Flats exhibits a typical picturesque composition, applied to an Australian scene. The focus is on the foreground elements of water, vegetation, and the figures that are completely at ease in the landscape, relaxing while the cattle graze unattended nearby. This intimate view of tranquil, productive countryside reveals the influence of the Barbizon school of painters on Buvelot.
Title
Yarra Flats
Artist/Maker and role
Louis BUVELOT: artist
Date
1872
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
31.4 x 61 cm
59.5 x 81.5 cm [frame]
Credit line
Purchased 1977
The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia
Accession number
1977/0P11

This is one of the paintings in our collection.

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