Golden Summer, Eaglemont [SEP] creator
Golden Summer, Eaglemont
Golden Summer, Eaglemont is an 1889 landscape painting by Australian artist Arthur Streeton. Painted "en plein air" at the height of a summer drought, it is an idyllic depiction of sunlit, undulating plains that stretch from Eaglemont—an "artists' camp" established by Streeton the previous year in rural Heidelberg—to the distant blue Dandenong Ranges, outside Melbourne. Naturalistic yet poetic, and a conscious effort by the 21-year-old Streeton to create his grandest work yet, it is a prime
1889 that "Golden Summer, Eaglemont" "abundantly testifies to [Streeton's] perfect sense of colour ... He paints summer effects as if he loved the country." When the painting appeared at the Victorian Artists Society's 1889 winter show, leading critic James Smith, while opposed to what he called "the impressionist fad", said "Golden Summer" "is the best example of this class of work in the exhibition."
Conder took "Golden Summer, Eaglemont" to London in April 1890, where