Afternoon Glow, Woodside c1930
Oil on Board
68x78cm
Signed Lower Right
Prov: Private Collection Adelaide
$40,000-60,000
Note: This work was a gift from the artist to Charles & Audrey Neill for their wedding in December 1930 in which Horace Trenerry was a guest of the occasion. Noted in the Adelaide Advertiser Wednesday 10th December 1930. Guest list attached verso.
Among the most distinctive figures in twentieth-century South Australian art, Horace Trenerry developed an intensely personal interpretation of the Australian landscape, producing a body of work that would earn him considerable recognition following his death. Born in Adelaide in 1899, Trenerry studied under James Ashton and Fred Britton before travelling to Sydney in 1922, where he attended Julian Ashton’s art school and formed an important friendship with the celebrated landscape painter Elioth Gruner. Returning to South Australia in 1923, he established himself in the Adelaide Hills near Woodside, beginning a formative period in which the surrounding countryside became central to his artistic development.
Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, the landscape surrounding Woodside provided Trenerry with an enduring source of inspiration. The region’s rolling hills, cultivated farmland, scattered eucalypts and changing seasonal conditions offered a rich variety of subjects, allowing him to develop an increasingly individual approach to landscape painting. His early works reveal the influence of Elioth Gruner, particularly in their sensitivity to natural light and atmosphere, while his association with Sir Hans Heysen further encouraged his engagement with the South Australian landscape. In 1927, Heysen visited Trenerry’s Woodside studio and invited him to paint alongside him, recognising the younger artist’s considerable ability. Although influenced by these established painters, Trenerry increasingly sought to develop his own artistic identity, moving beyond conventional landscape representation towards a more expressive interpretation of his surroundings.
The present work, dating from circa 1930, belongs to this important period of artistic development. By this time, Trenerry had established a growing reputation, having held his first solo exhibition in Adelaide in 1924 and exhibited regularly with the South Australian Society of Arts. His Woodside subjects were already attracting recognition, with paintings such as Silver and Blue, Woodside (1924) and Woodside Landscape (1927) demonstrating his sustained engagement with the district. In 1930, Trenerry travelled to the Flinders Ranges, encouraged by Heysen, an experience that broadened his understanding of the South Australian landscape and contributed to his subsequent artistic development. His paintings from the Woodside period therefore occupy an important position within his career, documenting the emergence of an independent artistic vision that would reach its fullest expression in his later work.
Despite his considerable talent, Trenerry’s career was frequently overshadowed by financial hardship and deteriorating health. In 1934, he moved to the Willunga district, where the landscapes of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula became the principal subjects of his mature work. During these later years, his paintings developed an increasingly expressive character, distinguished by their unconventional compositions and individual interpretation of colour and form. Although his achievements were not fully appreciated during his lifetime, subsequent reassessment has established Trenerry as an important contributor to Australian modern landscape painting.
