Hotspur🏳️🌈🇺🇦<p>"North-East View from the Northern Top of Mount Kosciusko," Eugene von Guerard, 1863.</p><p>Von Guerard (1811-1901) was an Austrian-born painter most famous for his work in Australia and New Zealand. He migrated to Australia in 1852, mainly to seek his fortune in the gold fields, but soon he found his calling as a chronicler of Antipodean landscape. </p><p>He was trained in the Düsseldorf School of painting, which specialized in highly detailed yet fanciful landscapes, usually allegorical in nature, and von Guerard made his mark with his lavish landscapes. By 1860 he was one of the top artists in Australia, but by the 1880s his star had faded. His work had begun to seem old-fashioned, and a combination of personal tragedy and financial ruin (when some investments failed) led to him dying in poverty in London.</p><p>Here we have a view from Australia's tallest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko (named, naturally, by colonizers; there are multiple Aboriginal names for it, and some are very disputed). It's easy to miss the human figures in the lower left/center, dwarfed by all the mountain around them. They're supposed to be scientists taking barometric readings, but here we have an allegory of man being dwarfed by nature.</p><p>From the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/Art" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Art</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/AustralianArt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AustralianArt</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/EugeneVonGuerard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>EugeneVonGuerard</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/Landscape" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Landscape</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/DusseldorfSchool" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DusseldorfSchool</span></a></p>