The valley

With its harmonious combination of colour, asymmetrical composition and elongated vertical format, The valley, 1898, is one of Sydney Long’s most celebrated paintings. Long was born in 1871 in Goulburn, New South Wales, and moved to Sydney in the early 1890s. In this work the artist has captured the winding valley of the popular artist destination, the Hawkesbury River, near Sydney. By eliminating details, simplifying form and flattening the pictorial space, he presents a vision of the Australian landscape as a dream-like formulation. This poetic approach, in the manner of art nouveau, was in stark contrast to the rugged nationalism that defined the paintings of those of his contemporaries associated with Australian Impressionism.

The twilight scene, of blues, greens and purples, was first exhibited in the 1898 Society of Artists exhibition in Sydney and again, in the same year, at the first federal exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, from which it was purchased by the Gallery. In August 1898 the reviewer of the Daily Telegraph highlighted the painting as the ‘best thing of its kind’ and praised Long for bringing something nuanced and new to painting.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture