POSTED: 26 APRIL 2010

A most impressive vision of Victorian-era art*

The exhibition Victorian Visions, on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 20 May to 29 August, will present an impressive collection of some 45 paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse.

The collection has been assembled by John Schaeffer, Australia’s most passionate and highly respected collector of 19th-century European art. It is the first time that many of these works have been seen in Australia.

Many of the works of art are superb examples from these significant artists. For example, the impressive 2.6-metre tall painting Mariamne, by JW Waterhouse, which recently featured so prominently in the Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy, London; Holman Hunt’s Il dolce far niente, recently in the Holman Hunt exhibition in Manchester and Toronto; Richard Redgrave’s The sempstress, one of the most important and most discussed early Victorian social realist images; and Leighton’s Athlete struggling with a python, long recognised as the seminal work in British new sculpture.

The Schaeffer collection complements the Art Gallery of NSW collection, expanding our experience of Victorian art in its various movements, including social realism, medievalism, pre-Raphaelitism, neo-classicism, aestheticism and symbolism. While the Gallery holds one of the richest collections of Victorian art in the world, many important artists either unrepresented or poorly represented in Sydney are now visible in the Schaeffer collection, for example, major works by Daniel Maclise, James Collinson, Frederick Sandys, Thomas Faed, Frank Dicksee and ER Hughes.

The prosperity of the Victorian era (1837-1901) transformed the British art world, creating a community of artists who were free to create paintings that depicted powerful stories from ancient history and contemporary life with a new richness of colour and wealth of detail. For example, Waterhouse’s painting Mariamne depicts the tragic story of the young wife of King Herod, who is leaving his throne room after being sentenced to death based on false accusations of infidelity. Frank Dicksee’s Chivalry is an iconic image of medieval gallantry as a knight in armour has slain his evil rival to rescue a classic damsel in distress. While Thomas Faed’s painting Worn out shows the weary carpenter who has been sitting all night at the bedside of his sick child and who finally falls asleep as the dawn rises.

*Based on media release issued by Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) Il dolce far niente, 1866, John Schaeffer Collection.