Arthur Streeton

(1867-1943)

Trafalgar Square, 1906

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Sir David Orme Masson, Melbourne
Private collection
Woolley and Wallis, London, 7 June 2017, lot 255
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
An Exhibition of Pictures by Arthur Streeton Prior to his Return to Europe, Upper Hibernian Hall, Melbourne, 20 April 1907, cat. 39
Loan Exhibition of Australian Paintings, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1925, cat. 44 (label attached verso)

RELATED WORK
Frosty Noon, c.1901, oil on canvas, 122.5 x 122.5cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne


Arthur Streeton left Australia in 1897, the lure of London and international exposure a rite of passage for many Australian artists before him. Streeton left behind the sustained success he had built over the previous decade. With the recent purchase of The Purple Noon's Transparent Might by the National Gallery of Victoria, Streeton set sail with great confidence in establishing himself in the artistic capital of the British Empire.

Streeton arrived in London having spent five months en route painting in Cairo. His early London years were met with much angst and frustration. He had few friends and found it challenging to portray the English landscape, a stark contrast to the Australian countryside in which he painted with such ease and self-assurance. Homesick and nostalgic for his youth, he also seemed to suffer a time of artistic confusion.

One of his most iconic paintings from his visit is Frosty Noon, c.1901 (formerly known as The Centre of the Empire) now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, in which he portrays Trafalgar Square from above. Strongly reminiscent of Turner and Corot, whom he had become exposed to visiting the numerous institutions London had to offer. Here he approaches the subject matter in a much more dramatic wintery mode, 'he had to climb to the top roof of the a high church over-looking Trafalgar Square, and sit aside the ridge-capping, prep his canvas before him, arrange something to hold his colour-box, and in that precarious position paint in freezing weather until his fingers almost froze to his brush, and his left hand was numbed with cold while holding the palette. This performance he went through time after time, until the picture was completed, just to get the particular point of view and the atmospheric effects he had determined to portray'.1

Whilst the present work may not have required such dedication en-plein-air, Streeton's delicate handling of the medium lends itself to such a fine example. The view is slightly lower than that of Frosty Noon, executed in a similar vein to Morning Mist on the Thames, c.1906, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Trafalgar Square is seen through an atmosphere of bluey-grey haze, the stately Nelson's Column rises above the surrounding buildings, with the statue of King George IV predominant against the fog. Using clever, subtle brush strokes Streeton manipulates the paint to illustrate the figures and carts that inhabit the street below.

Originally acquired by David Masson Orme, an English scientist who emigrated to Australia to become Professor of Chemistry at Melbourne University, and who originally lent the work to the major 1925 Loan Exhibition at the National Gallery in which it was hung alongside works such as Tom Roberts' Shearing the Rams, also in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Alex Clark

1.'Australian in Art', The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 16 October 1926, p. 16