W. C. PIGUENIT

Australian 1836–1914

W. C. Piguenit stands alone in the story of Australian painting, without school or circle. Australian-born (Hobart) and largely self-taught, he specialised in dramatic landscape panoramas that invite comparison with the work of contemporary British and American rather than Australian painters. His mist-shrouded mountain top and river gorge subjects have been compared with those of the Scottish painter Peter Graham, and some of his mountain subjects recall Albert Bierstadt’s views of the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite Valley.

Piguenit spent roughly half his life in Tasmania and the other half in New South Wales, with trips to Britain in 1898 and 1900. Moving to Sydney in 1880, he lived at Hunters Hill from 1882. His third house there, Saintonge, faced up Lane Cove River where, not surprisingly, he found many of his subjects. A winter evening, Lane Cove, 1888, is an early exploration of a theme he returned to many times—a luminous sky with contre-jour, or back-lit, clouds, and a watery foreground illuminated with reflected light from the clouds. His most famous picture, The flood in the Darling, 1890, 1895, (in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales), used this formula on a very grand scale.

A winter evening, Lane Cove was exhibited at the Art Society of New South Wales, Sydney, in September 1888, and was considered one of the finest pictures in the exhibition and thoroughly Australian. The perspective is excellent; and the water in the foreground, studded with rushes, reflects the rocks to the left, and winding beyond marks the distance finely. There is perfect repose, the blue smoke alone showing that the steamer is in motion. The painting is almost photographic in detail and minuteness, but without the faults that sometimes accompany this style.1

1 Sydney Mail, 29 September 1888, p. 662

Terence Lane