"Evening Light – Narrabeen"
Oil on Canvas on Board
24x53cm
Signed Lower Left, Dated 1920
Prov: Bonhams & Goodman 2005.
Private Collection Adelaide
$4,000-6,000
Sydney Long is celebrated for creating a distinctly Australian vision of the landscape, moving beyond the naturalism of the Heidelberg School to develop a more decorative and poetic interpretation of the bush. Throughout his career he returned to familiar locations including the Hawkesbury River, Narrabeen Lakes and the Sydney coastline, drawing inspiration from their quiet waterways, open bushland and pastoral scenery. Narrabeen, where Long maintained a caravan and spent long periods painting and teaching, became one of his most enduring sources of inspiration.
Alongside his celebrated mythological subjects, Long produced a substantial body of pastoral landscapes that celebrated the harmony between people and nature. Rather than recording the landscape with strict realism, these works distilled the character of rural New South Wales into balanced compositions of rolling hills, waterways, grazing stock and native trees. Whether depicting the pastoral countryside or the tranquil surroundings of Narrabeen, Long’s paintings reflect a lifelong fascination with the Australian landscape and helped establish him as one of the country’s most distinctive early twentieth-century painters.
