THE ART OF CONRAD MARTENS 



precious and typical. I cannot think that they much admired the 

 gum, for it interfered with all their accepted notions of tree forma- 

 tion. Looking at the work done by our pioneer artists, we find 

 little that is convincingly Australian until we come to Bouvelot, 

 whose Pool at Coleraine is the most admirable piece of Australian 

 landscape achieved by the elder men. Such a landscape is a dis- 

 covery in the art of seeing, and it cost Bouvelot much and 

 profound study before he realized it. Here we have something 

 which reminds us of Australia and no other land. The light 

 is mellow and sunny, the drawing expressive and faithful ; for 

 Bouvelot was dominated by the true Gallic instinct for the 

 verities. He has not twisted his material to a pictorial conformity, 

 but has divined and realized its true character. 



Nicholas Chevalier was not so successful. In his Vieto of 

 Melbourne from the Yarra the group of trees to the right might 

 easily be elms, so casually has he marked their construction and 

 leafage. Martens drew the gum with more insight, but he was 

 over thirty when he landed and his touch was already formed. 

 In all his renderings of the gum foliage that I have seen, he gives 

 no more than a suggestion in his drawings, by a flowing round 

 line, in his aquarelles, by an accumulation of small touches, 

 little blots of colour, which break up the masses and destroy that 

 essential shape of the gum, which Heysen alone has conquered 

 and handles so beautifully. And here it is interesting to note 

 how very few of our native-born artists have been successful with 

 the gum. It is only by setting free its form against the sky that 

 one can reveal the infinite variety of its shape within the fixed 

 character. In its primeval condition it is, seen close at hand, 

 almost unpaintable ; only where settlement has thinned and 

 scattered the legions, and the individual giant dominates his 

 fellows, does decorative space of tree and earth and sky become 

 material for the painter's art. No European formulae for painting 

 trees are of any utility here, where the sky spaces are so different 

 in shape and light effect, the pattern and weight of foliage so 

 unusual. The problem demands unflinching courage and a 

 student's submissiveness, without a backward glance at methods 

 generalized to the expression of other flora. 



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