WHO WAS JOHN GLOVER?The artist who inspired the Glover Prize was the first European to capture the true form and light of the Australian landscape. John Glover came to Australia already praised as good as Constable and Turner, then in Tasmania he become an artworld pioneer. John Glover is called the father of Australian landscape painting, the most important 19th century landscape painter to work in Australia. He lived the last 19 years of his life in Tasmania, not far from Launceston, near Evandale, the location of the annual Glover Prize. Glover was born in England in 1767 and grew up in a most fabulous time for elegance and innovation, the 18th century. In this milieu, Glover was very successful: artistically, financially and socially. Recognised by his peers as a man of genius, he made his mark in England, then at retiring age, he moved to Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land. Here he continued his career, refreshed, with a new landscape to depict as it had never been shown before. John Glover sounds like a charming and fun man: he has been described as cheerful, mischievous, eccentric, even-tempered, gregarious, energetic, adventurous and enthusiastic man with a good countenance, an almost heavenly aspect and excellent spirits. A sober person who enjoyed excellent health, he had a sturdy build and rather untidy personal style. His two club feet and 18 stone frame (he was over six feet tall) didn’t slow him down, Glover was a great traveller. Early in his career Glover’s success was in landscape watercolours. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1795 and for a number of years showed there annually. He first exhibited in oils in 1799 at The Royal Academy, London, and had his first major success as a painter in that medium. He sold his view of Durham Cathedral in 1812 for 500 guineas. Glover toured Europe on painting expeditions and his work was praised in the highest circles. He exhibited in Paris in 1814 and was presented with a gold medal by Louis XVIII for his large oil The Bay of Naples. In 1820 he opened his own very successful gallery at 16 Old Bond Street London. “Nevertheless, it is his Australian paintings that are his finest and will ensure his lasting fame,” according to Glover specialist, David Hansen. “In these late works, painted when the artist was in his sixties, he invigorates the European classical tradition and eighteenth-century conventions with bright antipodean light, the colours and forms of Australian native vegetation and the traditional customs of the Aboriginal people. They are among the most important landscapes made outside Europe in the 1830s,” writes Hansen. Three of Glover's sons left England for Van Diemen's Land arriving in 1829. Two years later Glover and his wife Sarah joined them with their oldest son, John Richardson Glover. They disembarked at the Tamar river near Launceston on the artist's 64th birthday, February 18th, 1831. Excited at the prospect of finding a new landscape, he saw it with fresh eyes and was the first artist to paint the real light and botanica, not an imaginary European version. Here in the colony his style transformed itself as he responded to the light and landscape of this island. He was the first to notice, if not the first to depict, the "remarkable peculiarity of the trees in this country: however numerous, they rarely prevent your tracing through them the whole distant country." In 1831, he obtained one of the last large grants of land on the island and the following year settled at Mills Plains, Deddington, 20 kilometres from Evandale on a property he named Patterdale. Here he farmed and painted commissioned works for the landowners of the colony and landscapes for sale in London. Glover was prolific, in 1835 he sent 68 paintings to London to be exhibited, 38 of these were of Van Dieman’s Land. In 2001 one of these paintings Mount Wellington and Hobart Town with Natives Dancing and Bathing sold for over $1.5 million. Glover’s last major work was completed on his 79th birthday. He died at 82 in 1849 and is interred in a vault at Nile Chapel, Deddington. John Glover’s paintings are on display at major Australian galleries including in Tasmania the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. In Britain the V&A has a substantial collection of Glover and the Louvre in Paris also holds his work. Glover had lived two distinct artistic lives. He had great success in England and then came out to Australia where he, as critic John McDonald notes, ...totally reinvented himself, almost by accident as the first great Australian landscape painter. BACK TO TOP John Glover, Self Portrait, c1792-3.
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