Watercolour
Maker & role
Douglas Dundas (b.1900, d.1981), Artist
Production date
1938
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Object detail
Title
Spring at Vaucluse House, 1938
Production place
Collection
Measurements
Sight measurement, H: 36 x W: 43cm (H: 360 x W: 430mm); New frame dimensions, H: 54 x W: 60cm (H: 540 x W: 600mm)
Subject Place
Signature & marks
Signed in pencil, lower left 'Douglas Dundas /38'
From a newspaper clipping dated 1938 [newspaper title and date cropped] attached to mount of the painting, reviewing an exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. “WATERCOLOURS, WORK BY 20 ARTISTS, MACQUARIE GALLERIES EXHIBITION…Particularly striking because it shows the artists in a new light is ‘Spring at Vaulcuse House’ by Douglas Dundas. Lately Mr Dundas’ colour schemes have usually been a bit muddy and disturbing. But in the new offering, which is a product of the 1938 season, he has attained a singularly engaging freshness. The drawing of the old stone building, seen through a complex screen of interlacing tree trunks and branches, is masterly both in its strength of line and in its feeling for form, and the pale colour enriches, while it does not distract attention from, the black and white foundation.”
From a newspaper clipping dated 1938 [newspaper title and date cropped] attached to mount of the painting, reviewing an exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. “WATERCOLOURS, WORK BY 20 ARTISTS, MACQUARIE GALLERIES EXHIBITION…Particularly striking because it shows the artists in a new light is ‘Spring at Vaulcuse House’ by Douglas Dundas. Lately Mr Dundas’ colour schemes have usually been a bit muddy and disturbing. But in the new offering, which is a product of the 1938 season, he has attained a singularly engaging freshness. The drawing of the old stone building, seen through a complex screen of interlacing tree trunks and branches, is masterly both in its strength of line and in its feeling for form, and the pale colour enriches, while it does not distract attention from, the black and white foundation.”
Credit line
Purchase, 2006
Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Vaucluse House Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caption
Spring at Vaucluse House, 1938
Description
View of Vaucluse House from the southwest in watercolour, pencil and ink. The work has a subdued palette of browns, greys, blue-greys and pink-browns with a number of these used as washes. The view is from the slope occupied by the re-instated Vaucluse House kitchen garden looking into the service yard to the south-western corner of the bedroom wing and western flank of the kitchen wing. The foreground features a post and wire fence (formerly post and rail), tree ferns (Dicksonias), a large rhododendron, deciduous trees and eucalypts (and their branches) at different angles, giving the view the interlaced quality described in 1938 [SMH 21 Sept. 1938 p.11]. The service yard wall is depicted with its coping and buttressing intact. The bulk of the kitchen wing roof is broken up by unusual shading. The larder and dairy roof is shown with a higher pitch than it actually has. The work has a replacement wide card mount and its original gold-painted frame.
The watercolour view by Douglas Dundas, a leading Sydney School artist and teacher is an important addition to the collection of 19th and 20th century views of the Vaucluse estate. The 20th century views (by artists such as Lionel Lindsay, Herbert Moore, James A. Crisp and Eirene Mort) favour media such as watercolour and etching and more picturesque ‘pictorialist’ details of the estate and its buildings over the sweeping Picturesque views of artists such as Conrad Martens, Jacob Janssen and G. E. Peacock.
The watercolour view by Douglas Dundas, a leading Sydney School artist and teacher is an important addition to the collection of 19th and 20th century views of the Vaucluse estate. The 20th century views (by artists such as Lionel Lindsay, Herbert Moore, James A. Crisp and Eirene Mort) favour media such as watercolour and etching and more picturesque ‘pictorialist’ details of the estate and its buildings over the sweeping Picturesque views of artists such as Conrad Martens, Jacob Janssen and G. E. Peacock.
Accession number
V2006/3
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