Louis BUVELOT

Swiss 1814–88
worked in Brazil 1835–52, Australia 1865–88

When Louis Buvelot arrived in Melbourne in 1865, Eugène von Guérard was well established as the city’s premier artist. By the mid 1870s, however, some reviewers were beginning to tire of von Guérard’s sublime subjects and polished, miniaturist technique. In the Catalogue of the Intercolonial Exhibition, 1875, we read that ‘M. Eugene von Guerard is a most painstaking artist, given, it is true, to a pre-Raphaelistic precision in detail, which detracts from the undoubted merits of his paintings’. The same well-informed critic, who obviously knew of Buvelot’s links with the Swiss followers of the Barbizon School, continued:

Amongst the ranks of Victorian artists in oils, M. Buvelot stands unrivalled as a paysagiste. He follows closely the footsteps of a school adopted by two modern compatriots, who, however, are little known out of France. As delineators of French scenery, the names of Millet and Corot have become as familiar as household words in the country that gave them birth. The beauties and eccentricities of nature, the novelty of atmospheric effects, the gloriously-blended tints of summer time, and the calm grey tone of winter have been wonderfully depicted by these two artists. And what they have done for France M. Buvelot is doing for Victoria. Nature is the fount from whence he draws his inspiration. Amidst the towering gums of the Australian forest, he finds material for his canvas; the bush track, the winding creek, the tortuous Yarra, the rugged slopes of basaltic hills are reproduced with unerring faithfulness and skill, surrounded with the halo of Nature’s realistic poetry that gives to his pictures life and soul.

While Buvelot often painted en plein air, he still put great store by drawing. As early as 1866, following von Guérard’s example, he found time to make a trip to the Western District of Victoria, to look for good scenery and wealthy patrons. After that he was frequently on the road—his dated sketches record his peregrinations as effectively as a diary. In 1875 he visited the Mornington Peninsula and made a number of drawings of Dromana. Bush track, Dromana, dated 1875, is based on two of them. The splendid pencil sketch for the left-hand side of the painting—a sandy pathway leading up a hill through untidy bushland—is held by the National Gallery of Victoria. There are several candidates for the source of the right-hand image. Two years later, in 1877, Buvelot painted another Dromana view, Mount Martha from Dromana’s hill (in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria). It is effectively an expansion of the right-hand side of Bush track, Dromana into a separate painting.

Terence Lane

At Point Nepean, 1875, shows a rock formation at the popular artistic destination Cape Schanck, on Mornington Peninsula (von Guérard and Nicholas Chevalier also painted there). Buvelot’s freer technique suits his subject, conjuring up a choppy, foam-crested sea and a luminous wintry sky with the possibility of a storm to come.

Terence Lane