Arthur Streeton (1867-1943)
Cremorne 1895
oil on wood
17.5 x 66 cm
Gift of Howard Hinton 1934
Sponsored by Michael Dunlop in 2020 for the Adopt An Artwork Program

Born 1867, Duneed, Victoria. Died 1943, Dandenong Ranges, Victoria.

Sir Arthur Streeton was a founding member of the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionists, and is considered one of Australia’s best known and influential landscape painters. His landscapes, pastoral scenes of bush life and portraits celebrated highly held values of resourcefulness, egalitarianism and freedom, giving them an important role in defining Australia’s national identity.

Streeton attended night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Art from 1882 to 1887. In 1886 he met Tom Roberts who invited him to join a painting group which included Frederick McCubbin. In 1888, he occupied a farmhouse at Eagelmont near Heidelberg, where he and his friends, who now included Charles Conder, painted en plein air, attempting to capture the unique beauty of the Australian landscape. The Heidelberg painters opened their 9 x 5 (inches) Exhibition of Impression in 1889 as a rebellion against the academic tradition of Victorian painting. The 182 exhibits, including more than 40 by Streeton, were mostly painted on cedar cigar-box lids.

In 1980 Streeton moved to Sydney. He lived for a time in an artist’s camp at Sirius Cove, Sydney, with Tom Roberts, and it was here that he first met Howard Hinton. Cremorne was painted during this period along with many other works – now iconic paintings of the Sydney Harbour.