The large landscape of Airey’s Inlet was painted by the renowned Australian artist Charles Bush. It is a view of Airey’s Inlet, a small seaside town on the Great Ocean Road, about 120km southwest of Melbourne. Airey’s Inlet is one of the oldest settlements on this part of the Victorian coast. It derives its name from John Airey, who took up a pastoral lease at Point Roadknight, slightly to the east, in 1839. The landscape is painted in oil on board. The view depicted looks over the inlet and Painkalac Creek towards the Split Point lighthouse, built in 1891. There is a yacht sailing on the inlet, and figures on the path in the middle distance. In the left foreground is a painter at an easel, probably Bush’s longtime companion and fellow artist Phyl Waterhouse. The picture is framed, and measures 105 x 136cm overall. It was probably painted in the early 1950s. A brass plaque attached to the frame records that it is the gift of W.E.A. Hughes-Jones, a member of the Court of Examiners from 1952 to 1962. Artist Charles Bush (1919-1989) was born in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy on 23 November 1919. After attending high school in Coburg, he entered the National Gallery of Victoria art school in 1934 and studied under W.B. McInnes. He enlisted in 1940, and was appointed an official war artist from 1943 to 1946. In 1950 he won a British Council travel grant which enabled him to go on a study tour of Great Britain and Europe. A versatile and gifted artist, he won many prizes and awards throughout his career. He was equally at home in many genres of painting and drawing, but he excelled at portraits and landscapes. He died in Melbourne in November 1989.ARTISTS SIGNATURE BOTTOM RIGHT "BUSH"airey’s inlet, charles bush, w.e.a. hughes-jones