Australian Art Reproduction Oil Paintings On Canvas

Famous Australian Paintings

Australian art first appeared in caves and rocks some 30,000 years ago.

Australian Landscape paintings began when the first British settlers arrived in 1788. The first notable landscape painter was the English-born John Glover, who adapted his English painting style to accommodate the far more intense light experienced in Australia.

Another Englishman, Conrad Martens, was also a successful artist in oils and watercolor. Campbell’s Wharf of 1857 is his best-known oil painting, and his series of studies of Sydney Harbor are his most famous works in watercolors. Martens is also famous for sailing with Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle.

After the Australian gold rush of 1851, wealthy settlers began to purchase landscape paintings. Louis Buvelot, a Swiss painter, was a key figure in Australian landscape painting of the time. Buvelot was influenced by the Barbizon school of painters in France, and painted en plein air, much like European Impressionist oil painting. Known as the Father of Landscape Painting in Australia, his style was to show a less wild and more settled view of the Australian landscape.

Famous Artists of Australian Paintings

• Clarice Beckett was an Australian landscape artist famous for her misty paintings of the Melbourne suburbs and seascapes near Baumaris. She is known as an important member of the Australian tonalism art movement. Beckett studied under one of the most famous impressionist artists Frederick McCubbin. 
  
  Clarice Beckett rarely left Melbourne and spent most of her life caring for her invalid parents. Clarice Beckett died of pneumonia at just 48.
  
   
• Frederick McCubbin was a member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian Impressionism. He traveled to Europe only once in his life and where he saw oil paintings by J.M.W. Turner and the French Impressionists. These paintings greatly influenced his own later work. McCubbin is recognized as one of the best Australian artists.
  
   
• Tom Roberts was a close friend of Frederick McCubbin and a member of the Australian Impressionist movement. He was born in England, and his parents migrated to Australia in 1869. In 1881 he traveled to Europe to study art at the Royal Academy Schools. Roberts painted many scenes of working Australian life, with several famous paintings depicting sheep shearers and other aspects of rural life.
  
   
• Sir Arthur Streeton is a famous landscape painter and member of the Australian Impressionist movement.
  
  The French Impressionists influenced Arthur Streeton. He traveled to Europe and London, exhibiting at the National Gallery in 1900. He was made an official war artist and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, working at hospitals in London.
  
  After the war, Arthur Streeton returned to Australia and continued to paint, and he was knighted in 1937.

Famous Oil Paintings by Australian Artists

Australian museums and art galleries widely hold oil paintings by Clarice Beckett. Her most famous oil paintings on canvas are Wet Evening, 1927, at the Castlemaine Art Museum, Morning Shadows, 1932, at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and Silent Approach, 1924, at the National Gallery of Australia.

Frederick McCubbin’s 1893 painting Bush Idyll was sold for over $2 million, at the time a record price for a painting by an Australian painter. His painting from 1904, a triptych called The Pioneer, is held by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Other famous paintings include Down on His Luck, painted in 1889 and held in Perth by the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and On the Wallaby Track, painted in 1896 and held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

Tom Roberts is best known for two of his most significant paintings, Shearing the Rams, painted in 1890 and held by the National Gallery of Australia, and The Big Picture, displayed at Parliament House in Canberra. The Big Picture was painted in 1901 and showed the opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. This huge iconic painting measures 10 feet by 17 feet.

Discover famous landscape paintings by some of the greatest Australian artists. Buy fine art reproductions from our extensive online collection of replica art.