A Different Perspective

In his avowedly ‘selective’ view of Maitland from the riverbank, Peter Pinson (1943-2017) has created an abstract rendering of the natural and built forms of the city that simplifies them to their essence. Using acrylic paint, Pinson divides his composition into black-rimmed horizontals of river and bank, balanced by the vertical blocks of buildings. A […]

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Business As Usual

Claire Martin (1952-) has captured the curve of the levee bank as it rises above the Hunter River in Riverbank Path – Maitland (2006). The painting was commissioned for the exhibition View of Maitland from the riverbank (with apologies to Jan Vermeer and View of Delft) at Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) in 2006. Martin […]

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The Painters in The Painting

In his view across the Hunter River, Maitland – John and Leo (2006), Euan Macleod captures the energy of a gathering storm about to unleash its fury on two fellow artists painting the same view. Macleod paints the moment with an expressionistic spontaneity, using his palette knife and brush to capture the sky darkening over […]

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Maitland’s Golden Age

The influence of the Dutch Golden Age of painting is very clear in Alexander McKenzie’s (1971-) Cloud cover over Maitland, painted in 2006. Dutch artists of the seventeenth century conveyed pride in their flourishing cities in paintings such as View of Delft (1633) by Johannes Vermeer, which is the inspiration for this view by McKenzie. […]

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Gateways to Waterways

Emma Lohmann’s (1970-) A view of Maitland (after Vermeer) pays homage to Johannes Vermeer’s A view of Delft (1663), a masterpiece described by the nineteenth-century novelist Marcel Proust as ‘the most beautiful painting in the world’. Vermeer painted the waterborne entrance to the Dutch city of Delft, where visitors arrived at the city’s imposing gateway by […]

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