TWILIGHT, RIVER GOULBURN, VICTORIA, 1878
HENRY JAMES JOHNSTONE
oil on canvas
26.0 x 51.0 cm
signed and dated lower left: H.J. Johnstone 1878
inscribed with title and artist’s name on old label verso
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne (label attached verso)
Private collection, Melbourne
Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 20 April 2011, lot 84
Private collection, Melbourne
In nineteenth-century Australia, the marriage of photography and painting reached fascinating heights - perhaps none greater than those achieved by British-born H.J. Johnstone. Drawn to Australia by gold, his popularity grew through his fashionable photographic studio on Melbourne’s Bourke Street, together with his nationalistic landscapes and flamboyant personality. Exhibiting with the Victorian Academy of Arts from 1872, he was inclined to paint looking into the light, especially sunsets – captured with awe-inspiring realism, stillness echoed in mirrored images and gums silhouetted in grandeur. Johnstone’s related work, Evening Shadows, Backwater of the Murray, 1880, was the first painting acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1881.
DAVID THOMAS