It may have been painted 340 years later and on the other side of the world, but Michael Fitzjames (1948-) has channelled the spirit of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s famous View of Delft (1663) in View of Maitland from the riverbank (2006). Like Vermeer, Fitzjames has split his canvas into three horizontal bands of […]
One Sunday shortly before Christmas in 1928, Frederick V. D’Arcy (1901-1996) sat down to write the following inscription on the first blank page of a small leather-bound bible: ‘16th December 1928, Presented to Mr. B. Wallbank, From the Dudley Presbyterian Sunday School, F.V. D’Arcy, Superintendent.’ D’Arcy was born in Walcha, New South Wales, on Anaiwan […]
These scrapbooks were compiled by the Babaneek Ladies’ Choir (1950-1982) and are a reminder of their community work between 1950-1973 and 1979-1981. They trace the choir’s long performance history throughout the Lake Macquarie and Hunter Valley regions. The Babaneek Ladies’ Choir was motivated by the charitable intention of bringing joy and comfort through song, this […]
Sometime in 1934 or after, a librarian at Maitland Girls’ High School picked up a rubber stamp with the institution’s name on it, dabbed it on an inkpad, and stamped the first inside page of this booklet. It had recently been printed by West Maitland printer T. Dimmock for St Peter’s Anglican Church, of East […]
The marriage of Gustav (Gus) Wagner and Ottilie (Tilly) Schmidt in October 1907 was definitely an important and notable event in the social circles of Jindera and represented the coming together of four of the original German settler families: the Wagners, Roslers, Schmidts, Kalms and if Ottilie’s mother’s family is included, the Schultzs. The young […]
Suzanne Archer (1945-) has been painting the Australian landscape since she arrived here from England in 1965. She won the Wynne Prize in 1994 for her work Waratahs – Wedderburn. Her large, abstract works interpret country through collaged and layered elements that retain some aspects of figuration, such as the trees and horizon lines in […]
Judith White’s (1951-) view of the Hunter River at Maitland is painted in a most appropriate medium – watercolour. White has used the transparent washes of paint to suggest the smoothly gliding waters of the river and its reflection of the stormy sky above. The massing, dense clouds threaten to burst at any minute with […]
In On the bank John R Walker paints the banks of the Hunter River at Maitland. The rooftops and spires of the city fill the top quarter of the canvas while the expanse of the river dominates the painting’s middle section, painted in swipes of earthy olive to convey the muddy water and its reflection […]
In high-keyed colour and with a light touch, Judith Ryrie (1934-) records an afternoon by the river at Maitland in a style she terms ‘graphic rural realism’. Ryrie is a Sydney-based artist, but she was born in regional Dubbo. Alongside eleven other artists, Ryrie painted this view for the exhibition View of Maitland from the […]
Perhaps Leo Robba’s (1962-) view of the Hunter River at Maitland was a presage of his future research. Since painting this view in 2006 for the exhibition View of Maitland from the riverbank (with apologies to Jan Vermeer and View of Delft) at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG), Robba has gone on to complete a […]
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