Hans Heysen

Hans Heysen – A grand vision: strong forms and bold light

One of Australia’s best-known landscape painters, Hans Heysen (1877–1968) was also one of the most successful during his lifetime. He changed the way we view the Australian landscape, with his distinctive gum trees having now become a part of our national imagery. The forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia celebrates Heysen’s work.

Heysen painted the majesty of Australia. He did so through his images of huge gum trees around Hahndorf and the stark hills of the Flinders Ranges. Heysen’s largeness of vision is evident in oil paintings such as Mystic morn 1904, Red gold 1913 and Droving into the light 1914–21.

In these works, Heysen observed nature acutely, portraying individual species of gum trees in all their specificity—a river red gum distinguished from a white gum or a stringybark. But these images are not just descriptive; they are triumphant portraits, with symbolic resonance. Heysen ‘humanised’ his trees into dramatic self-conscious poses, imbuing them with qualities of endurance, resilience and grandeur. And he arranged his trees within the landscape as if they were sculptural forms or architectural columns.

Mystic morn, for instance, depicts two young cows moving through a eucalyptus grove in the early morning light. Heysen painted it soon after his return to Adelaide after studying in Europe for four years, and it reflects his new awareness of the character of the Australian bush. In the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, visitors will be able to see together for the first time four versions of this image: two drawings, one watercolour and an oil painting.

They will be able to observe how the artist explored the same subject in different media. In the first drawing, Group of young trees c 1904, Heysen made a tentative sketch, possibly outdoors, depicting sinuous trees and their peeling bark. The second drawing, Study for ‘Mystic morn’ 1904, is a densely worked compositional study for the oil painting, with very faint grid lines dividing the image into 16 even rectangles in preparation for transferring the design onto canvas—a method Heysen used throughout his career. This compositional drawing also includes a man beside the cow on the left, showing that Heysen initially considered including a figure in the painting. These changes demonstrate the way that Heysen carefully composed his landscapes—after first having made a sketch directly from nature.

He worked on his composition to make it more balanced and harmonious, and sought to direct the viewer’s eye through the image. The watercolour, Study for ‘Mystic morn’ 1904, may have been painted before the finished oil, but it could possibly have been painted after it. Unlike the carefully worked drawing, it is a freer image, painted in rich strong colours and using the watercolour medium to capture an intense light. There are no cows in this image, and the trees are more interwoven and intertwined. The trees almost seem to come to life. The work is also related to another oil painting by Heysen, Sunshine and shadow 1904–05.

In 1926, in search of a change in his art, Heysen visited the Flinders Ranges, more than 500 kilometres north of Adelaide, and began to depict the ancient mountain ranges there.

Before this, he had been attracted to the theme of nature laid bare, to scenes of quarries and cliff faces, but from 1926 to 1933 the dry bare-boned terrain of the Flinders Ranges became the focus of his art. He admired the way in which the hills were defined by light. He captured the sharp profiles of the hills, the clarity of the light, and the intense colours. But, more significantly, he saw this landscape as being dateless, frozen in time, and he captured its haunting silence. Writing to Sydney Ure Smith, Heysen observed that in the Flinders Ranges the scene was ready-made, ‘fine big simple forms against clear transparent skies—and a sense of spaciousness everywhere’.

Heysen was also interested in capturing the Australian sunlight in all its variety—from a brilliant glare to a misty haze. And through this he conveyed a sense of the spiritual or sublime in nature. In Droving into the light 1914–21, for instance, Heysen expressed his love of light, glowing through the monumental gums at the end of the day. The massive foreground trees provide scale for the picture as well as a frame directing the attention of the viewer towards the centre of the composition. It is a vision of nature as homely, secure and peaceful; a promised land.

In addition to his evocative gum tree paintings and the magnificent barren landscapes of the Flinders Ranges, the exhibition includes a number of Heysen’s lesser-known images, from his early student days and his time in Europe from 1899 to 1903. There are portraits of Heysen’s wife Sallie and still-lifes depicting the vegetables from his garden. There are landscapes that reflect Heysen’s experience of bushfires in the Adelaide hills, in which he captured the fierce blaze of the fire and the stifling heat emanating from it. And there are images of sheep wandering on dusty roads during a drought, which conjure up the smell of the hot, dry air.

Among Heysen’s intimate and domestic images is the delightful watercolour of two cats in a tree, Spring 1925. It is a simple snatch of life—with the cats stretching, crouching, possibly waiting for coming prey, or maybe just basking in the sun. Likewise, Bronzewings and saplings 1921 is a sparkling image and one of Heysen’s major watercolours. Here, the artist depicted a group of albino turkeys within a sapling glade. The Hahndorf postmistress had given him a number of bronzewing turkey eggs and, to his surprise, when the eggs hatched many of the chicks turned out to be white. The combination of bronzewing and white turkeys inspired this work. He took much care in painting the scene, laying down each colour freshly with a crisp edge and arranging the composition like a mosaic.

Heysen considered it one of his most complicated pieces of design. Some years after he had painted this watercolour, the Commonwealth Government commissioned Heysen to paint a similar work in oil, which he called The promenade 1953. In Canberra, both the watercolour and the oil will be shown together for the first time.

There is much to see in this exhibition, which throws a different light on Heysen. Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery of Australia, has summed up the artist’s achievements:

Comprising about 80 works, the exhibition Hans Heysen at the National Gallery of Australia has been organised and curated by the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Anne Gray
Head of Australian Art

An Adelaide art student 1893–99

From the age of fifteen, Hans Heysen developed a serious interest in art, constantly drawing and experimenting with watercolour and oil paint. While working full-time in a hardware store, he regularly walked to the Adelaide Hills in search of subjects to paint.

In mid-1893, Heysen began formal art studies with James Ashton at the Norwood Art School, and later began to exhibit regularly with the South Australian Society of Arts and the Adelaide Easel Club, receiving promising reviews in the local press. He also studied with H P Gill at the school of design at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Heysen won a gold medal for a work submitted to the Royal Drawing Society of Great Britain in 1899. With his considerable talent gaining recognition, four Adelaide businessmen gave him £400 to study in Europe. In return, Heysen agreed to send them all the finished pictures he painted while overseas.

A European art student 1899–1903

On the eve of his twenty-second birthday on 7 October 1899, Heysen boarded the Ville de la Ciotat at Port Adelaide and sailed for Marseilles, France. One month later he arrived in Paris and on the advice of fellow Australian students found lodgings on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, in the centre of the Parisian art world. He enrolled at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, and was later selected for admission to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts.

While studying in Paris from November 1899 to May 1902, Heysen spent each summer painting and studying the art collections in Holland and Scotland.

At the end of 1902 Heysen spent two months in Venice. He then travelled south, through Rome and Naples, crossing to the Isle of Capri, where he stayed for three months.

On 26 August 1903, at Naples, Heysen embarked for Australia on the Carlsruhe. One month later he arrived back home in Adelaide with an immeasurably improved technique.

The evolution of an artist

Back in Adelaide in 1904 Heysen established an art school and studio in the top storey of the Adelaide Steamship Buildings, in Currie Street. He held his first solo exhibition there in May 1904.

For the first time his work was acquired for public collections. Notably, the Art Gallery of South Australia bought Mystic morn 1904, which had been awarded the Wynne Prize for Australian landscape at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Heysen eventually received a total of nine Wynne Prize awards.

1904 was also personally significant for Heysen. In December he married Selma (Sallie) Bartels, one of his art students. The couple settled with Sallie’s widowed mother in her home at Hurtle Square in Adelaide. In 1908 they moved to a rented cottage in Hahndorf, in the Adelaide Hills.The evolution of an artist

Heroic gum trees

In 1908 the Heysens moved to a rented cottage in Hahndorf, in the Adelaide Hills. In 1912, with the financial success of Heysen’s second major solo exhibition in Melbourne, he purchased The Cedars, a property of thirty-six acres (14.5 hectares), near Hahndorf. The house was on a gentle slope, surrounded by pines and hilltops of gums. Heysen built a stone studio on the slope of a ridge, just beyond the house—an idyllic setting for a landscape painter.

Heysen produced many paintings of the monumental gum trees of Hahndorf. He was the first artist to use eucalypts as a persistent subject in his art, celebrating the nobility of certain species and presenting them as symbols of heroic endurance.

It would be a mistake to think that gum trees and the Flinders Ranges were Heysen’s only subjects. He also depicted city images such as those of the Adelaide railway station, domestic scenes of the turkeys and cats, still-lifes of the produce from his garden, views of industry in the activities of quarries at Crafers, and coastal landscapes.

Toilers of the land

Heysen identified himself completely with the particular locality, its life and its landscape, of Hahndorf. From 1908 to 1925, he made a concentrated record of this particular region.

His numerous drawings and watercolours depicting agriculture honoured the traditional working life of the Adelaide Hills. The toilers 1920, awarded the Wynne Prize in 1920, was inspired by what Heysen saw on an early morning visit to Hahndorf to collect the mail. The two draught-horses, Polly and Jack, were favourite subjects for him. The curved form of the bending worker rhymes with the horses: showing man and beasts in harmony. The motif recalls the imagery of the 19th century French artist Jean-François Millet.

The ‘toilers of the land’ series also includes Ploughing the field 1920 and portraits of local farmers and townspeople. Heysen knew these people well; he spoke German and talked with them about their daily routines in a hills community.

By the 1920s, the essential character of German labour in the fields had changed with increasing industrialisation and the clearing of land. Heysen’s images are a legacy of the way of life before the mechanisation of farming.

The Flinders Ranges

In 1926, at the age of forty-nine and already well established, Heysen went north into the Flinders Ranges. The ‘Far North’ of South Australia, beginning only 400 kilometres from Adelaide, is a long way short of Alice Springs. Between 1926 and 1933 Heysen made nine trips to the Flinders Ranges, with two further excursions in 1947 and 1949.

Heysen was the first artist to exhaustively study this landscape, as opposed to making topographical drawings and watercolours. His visits coincided with drought seasons. The bare, dry Flinders Ranges provided a new subject matter, entirely different from the Adelaide Hills agricultural landscapes and the studies of gum trees that had previously dominated his work.

Heysen sensed the need for a new approach, and reformed his style and techniques. He adopted simplified forms and strong colours in his paintings. They were more modernist works, introducing a new awareness of the diversity of the Australian landscape. He considered his Flinders landscapes some of the finest paintings he had made.

A new landscape: strategies and techniques

Heysen first recorded impressions of his subject on the spot, on his sketchboard—in either charcoal, pencil, chalk or ink, and sometimes watercolour—while seated outdoors on a stool. These sketches were mostly used as studies for future reference, to be worked on later in the studio.

He could not use the same colours in the north as he had used in the Adelaide Hills:

Watercolour was the most suitable medium to capture the arid characteristics of the Flinders Ranges. Apart from the fact that oils were too messy, they did not do justice to the harsh, dry atmosphere. Heysen felt that the transparency and luminosity of watercolour gave the most accurate representation of the light. But this was no easy task:

This exhibition was sponsored by the Art Gallery of South Australia and Visions of Australia

Supporting sponsors: The Canberra Times, WIN network, and Mantra on Northbourne

Event sponsors: Casella wines and Coopers

The original website for this exhibition was published in 2010 and has been archived for research purposes.