Stony Rises, Lake Corangamite

This scene is an imagined landscape, and a rare anomaly for Eugene von Guérard, famous for his scientific precision and artistic vision. His vision honoured a Humboldtian notion of the interconnectedness of nature; yet here nature is represented symbolically. This idealised Arcadian scene of an Aboriginal camp alludes to our nation’s difficult history. Some commentators have suggested that its sunset theme is a symbolic meditation on the melancholic condition of the displacement of Australia’s Aboriginal people.

At the time of von Guérard’s sketching trip to the area depicted in the work – Victoria’s Western Plains – European colonisation in the region, and the associated conflicts, had devastated Aboriginal life, especially for the local Gulidjan people. Conscious of the abolitionist movement, the artist may  have conceived this painting as a heartfelt aide-mémoire of the heavy price that had been paid for European invasion.

Tracey Lock, Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture