A clearing in the forest

While living and working in France for over forty years, Australian-born John Russell formed friendships with leading European artists such as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, friendships that saw him produce art more radical than anything painted at the same time in his homeland.

This painting of a forest scene coincides with a turning point in the development of the artist’s work. Between late 1890 and 1891 he visited the French coastal town of Antibes, on the Côte d’Azur, between Cannes and Nice, and responded to the experience by experimenting with intensifying his palette. In A clearing in the forest, Russell applies broken brushstrokes of pure colour to create vibrational chromatic effects. He also adopts a dramatically low vantage point and uses unnatural colours such as red, cadmium yellow, blue and emerald green to create form and structure, signalling his dramatic shift from depicting the world naturalistically.

Tracey Lock, Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture