Deutscher and Hackett

Arthur Streeton first lived in London between 1897 and 1906 but struggled to make an impression. For some years, he wooed the ‘brilliant, educated, successful, socially experienced and well-connected Canadian-born violinist Esther Leonora (Nora) Clench’¹, but his comparative status as an impoverished artist weighed heavily on his mind. Knowing that he still had a larger profile in Australia – indeed, a number of his early works were already attracting large sums at re-sale – Streeton decided to return briefly in late 1906, holding financially successful exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. Sufficiently emboldened, he returned to his now-fiancé in London, and they were married in 1908. Part of the honeymoon was spent in Venice, and Streeton returned there for a painting expedition in September, where he ‘threw off his devotion to conscious art, and became absorbed again in truth of presentation.’² Through his wife’s connections, he met Dr Ludwig Mond, whose chemical manufacturing business was famed in Europe. Mond was a major collector of art works, predominantly by historic European artists, but his ‘tastes were wide enough to encompass contemporary art, and Streeton was to find Ludwig Mond, and his sons Robert and Alfred, a valuable source of patronage over the years to come.’³ Indeed, the Monds’ purchased one of Streeton’s paintings of Venice’s Grand Canal in 1909, and the artist’s son was christened Charles Ludwig Oliver Streeton in honour of their patron and friend. In 1912, Streeton ‘joined a party led by the painter Sigismund Goetze, to travel down the Loire. Nora had been instrumental in Streeton’s involvement with Goetze, who was married to Ludwig Mond’s sister, Violet.’⁴
 
Over Easter the following year, Streeton, Nora, Oliver and his nanny stayed at the Monds’ home Coombe Bank in Sevenoaks, Kent. Built in 1725 for the Duke of Argyle, Coombe Bank is a Palladian-style villa sited near the River Darent with extensive acreages of forest including ‘a dozen or so old cedars and miles of park.’⁵ Ludwig Mond purchased the property in 1906 but on his death in 1909, it passed to son Robert who carried out extensive alterations to the gardens, building a rockery and a formal rose garden. Streeton wrote vividly of the days and evenings there filled with ‘billiards, golf, fishing, shooting, ‘music’, peaches and grapes – nothing wanting.’⁶ It also included a major commission from Mond to paint ‘a dozen landscapes of the place and surroundings to be hung in the house.’⁷ Cedar Tree, Coombe Bank, 1913, in particular, clearly expresses Streeton’s delight as he painted aspects that caught his eye. Rapidly executed, likely en plein air, the vigorous horizontal brush marks of the work convey the sweeping movement of branches caught by breezes on a gusty day. Likewise, the agitation inherent in the blustering clouds accentuates this sensation.
 
Other subjects featured in the sequence include a small play cottage known as the ‘Children’s house’, a stand of other cedars, and a substantial vista of the noble frontage of Coombe Bank with attendant mature trees. A further work, The lake, Coombe Banks, 1913, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, features people boating on the southern side of the property – again surrounded by trees and foliage. All these paintings display the ‘truth of presentation’ Streeton had been striving for following Venice, particularly evident in the evocative spontaneity he captured in this painting.
 
1. Wehner, V., Arthur Streeton of Longacres: A Life in the Landscape, Mono Unlimited, Melbourne, 2008, p. 6
2. Lindsay, L., ‘Arthur Streeton’, in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Arthur Streeton, Melbourne, 1935, p. 16
3. See Wray, C., Arthur Streeton: Painter of Light, Jacaranda, Brisbane, 1993, pp. 116, 120
4. ibid., p. 122
5. Arthur Streeton, Letter to Walter Pring, 30 March 1913, cited in Galbally, A. and Gray, A. (eds.), Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton 1890 – 1943, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, p. 125
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
 
ANDREW GAYNOR