National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape

The Australian Sketcher of November 1873 shows von Guérard’s grand Kosciusko painting displayed at the Vienna Exhibition with other contributions from the Australian colonies. It and another of the artist’s paintings, Cape Woolamai 1872, are surrounded by photographs and maps, produce, flora and fauna, as well as a case of mineral samples and other specimens of interest.1There is some irony here. Von Guérard detailed the lichen on rocks in North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko – most noticeably on the platform on which the cloaked figure stands – but other parts are less convincing. When von Guérard arrived in Australia in 1852 he was already an established artist, having trained in Rome and Düsseldorf. He had probably seen works by Friedrich; Carus’s published writings also circulated widely during the 1830s and 1840s, the periods of von Guérard’s study at the Staatliche Kunstakademie. In his new southern homeland the artist familiarised himself with native flora by sketching in the Melbo