John Glover (18 February 1767 – 9 December 1849) was an English-born artist. In later life he migrated to Van Diemen’s Land and became a pastoralist during the early colonial period. He has been dubbed "the father of Australian landscape painting."
Life in Britain
Glover was born at
Houghton-on-Hill in
Leicestershire
Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...
, England. He ate mustard on a regular basis to keep himself healthy. His parents were farmer William Glover and Ann (née Bright). He showed a talent for drawing at an early age, and in 1794 was practising as an artist and drawing-master in
Lichfield
Lichfield () is a cathedral city and civil parish in Staffordshire, England. Lichfield is situated roughly south-east of the county town of Stafford, south-east of Rugeley, north-east of Walsall, north-west of Tamworth and south-west of B ...
and
Aldridge
Aldridge is an industrial town in the Walsall borough, West Midlands, England. It is historically a village that was part of Staffordshire until 1974. The town is from Brownhills, from Walsall, from Sutton Coldfield and from Lichfield. ...
. The
Countess of Harrington helped establish his practice as an art instructor, and may have taken lessons from him herself.
He moved to London in 1805, became a member of the Old Water Colour Society, and was elected its president in 1807. In the ensuing years he exhibited a large number of pictures at the exhibitions of this society, and also at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. He had one-man shows in London in 1823 and 1824. He was a very successful artist and, although never elected a member of the Academy, his reputation stood very high with the public.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L.
The writings of Landon are transitional between Romanticism and the Victorian Age. Her first major breakthrough ...
refers to his London exhibition in The Literary Gazette, 19th April, 1823 and later includes an illustrative poem on
Glover achieved fame as a painter of "Italianate" romantic landscapes of Britain (including
The Falls of Foyers on Loch Ness, the Lake District and London) and Southern Europe. He became known in both England and France as ''the English Claude''. This phrase was making comparison with Glover and the French seventeenth century artist
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...
, whose works collected by eighteenth century English "grand tourists", strongly influenced the evolution of the English style, in both painting and the layout of landscape gardens.
Arrival in Australia
Glover decided to move to Australia, arriving in
Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration of Australia in the 19th century. A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land in 1803 before it became a sepa ...
(now
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
) on his 64th birthday in 1831.
He brought with him a strong reputation as a landscape painter. From April 1831 until early 1832 he lived in
Hobart
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
on a property named "Stanwell Hall", which can be seen in his work ''Hobart Town, taken from the garden where I lived''. In 1832 he acquired one of the largest grants of land in Van Diemen's Land at the time at ''Mills Plains'',
Deddington
Deddington is a civil parish and small town in Oxfordshire about south of Banbury. The parish includes two hamlets: Clifton and Hempton. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,146. Deddington is a small settlement but has a c ...
. He named his new property ''Patterdale'' after ''Blowick Farm'', a property near
Patterdale
Patterdale (Saint Patrick's Dale) is a small village and civil parish in the eastern part of the English Lake District in the Eden District of Cumbria, in the traditional county of Westmorland, and the long valley in which they are found, also ...
, at the foot of
Ullswater
Ullswater is the second largest lake in the English Lake District, being about long and wide, with a maximum depth a little over . It was scooped out by a glacier in the Last Ice Age.
Geography
It is a typical Lake District "ribbon lake", ...
in the
Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...
.
Glover’s apparently fraught relationship to his neighbour,
John Batman
John Batman (21 January 18016 May 1839) was an Australian grazier, entrepreneur and explorer. He is best known for his role in the founding of Melbourne.
Born and raised in the then-British colony of New South Wales, Batman settled in Van Die ...
, the bounty and aboriginal hunter, keeper of aboriginal servants and later a co-founder of
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
is revealed in his art and letters.
Glover helped build the Chapel at Deddington and is buried within these grounds.
Art in Australia
Glover is best known now for his paintings of the
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
n landscape. He gave a fresh treatment to the effects of the Australian sunlight on the native bushland by depicting it bright and clear, a definite departure from the darker "English country garden" paradigm. Note this example ''Patterdale Farm'' (circa 1840).
His treatment of the local flora was also new because it was a more accurate depiction of the Australian trees and scrubland. Glover noted the "''remarkable peculiarity of the trees''" in Australia and observed that "''however numerous, they rarely prevent your tracing through them the whole distant country''".
''Natives on the Ouse River, Van Diemen’s Land'' (1838)
depicts aboriginal people in the landscape but was painted after the
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
of
aboriginal Tasmanians
The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: ''Palawa'' or ''Pakana'') are the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and ...
. One critic argued the painting is "informed by European notions of an Antipodean Arcadia, with Indigenous people living in a landscape unsullied by European contact"
but Glover had experience of aboriginal Tasmanian people elsewhere.
John Glover's last major work was painted on his 79th birthday.
Australian legacy
The John Glover Society was established on 22 August 2001 to honour and promote Glover's memory and his contribution to Australian art. The society commissioned a life-size statue of Glover, unveiled in February 2003 in
Evandale, Tasmania
Evandale is an historic town in northern Tasmania, Australia. It sits on the banks of the South Esk River, 18 km south of Launceston. Named after early colonial explorer and Surveyor-General George Evans, the town is famous for its late-G ...
. It also runs the annual
Glover Prize
The Glover Prize is an Australian annual art prize awarded for paintings of the landscape of Tasmania The prize was inaugurated in 2004 by the John Glover Society, based in Evandale, Tasmania, in honour of the work of British-born landscape pai ...
, which is held in Evandale.
John Glover's work features in many prominent art galleries throughout Australia (and the world). His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and a symposium in Australia.
From 2004, The John Glover Society has awarded the
Glover Prize
The Glover Prize is an Australian annual art prize awarded for paintings of the landscape of Tasmania The prize was inaugurated in 2004 by the John Glover Society, based in Evandale, Tasmania, in honour of the work of British-born landscape pai ...
for depictions of Tasmanian landscapes. It is the richest art prize in Australia for landscape painting.
In 2019, the farmhouse once occupied by the Glover family, southeast of
Launceston, was restored and of surrounding land, which frequently featured in Glover's work, was
heritage listed as '
Patterdale and Nile Farm'.
In 2021, an early 19th century sketchbook featuring 90 pages of Glover's sketches commencing from 1817 was sold at an auction for AU$150,000 to a private collector in Tasmania.
It was placed up for auction with London auction house Ewbank's on 17 June 2021 with an original listing price of $5,500.[ The auction attracted over 1,000 online bidders with four extra phone lines required to meet demand.][
]
References
*
External links
John Glover
at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...
*
Italian Landscape 1841
- in Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat, both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian H ...
*Bernard Smith,
Glover, John (1767 - 1849)
, Australian Dictionary of Biography
The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's ...
, Volume 1, MUP, 1966, pp 455–456.
John Glover at Australian Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glover, John
1767 births
1849 deaths
18th-century English painters
English male painters
19th-century English painters
English watercolourists
Australian people of English descent
19th-century Australian painters
19th-century English male artists
Australian male painters
18th-century English male artists