One of the most significant works in Geelong Gallery's collection, Eugene von Guerard's masterpiece View of Geelong, is a magnificent panorama of Geelong seen from a vantage point near the village of Ceres, in the nearby Barrabool Hills.

Suffused with a warm and mellow afternoon light, von Guerard's composition is typical of his grand manner with close attention paid to the observation and recording of every aspect of the vista, from the diminutive buildings clustered in the township of Geelong, and around its port, to the surrounding pastoral landscape, the distant You Yangs and the even more distant Dandenong Ranges, the steamer on Corio Bay, the bullock team in the foreground and the deeply-cut valley of the Barwon.

It was painted four years after the artist's arrival in Australia, by which stage von Guerard was well established as Australia's foremost painter of 'wilderness' landscapes and 'house portraits'.

oil on canvas, 89 x 154.5cm

Paintings by Australian artists, or of Australian subjects by immigrant artists - are one of the most significant components of the Geelong Gallery collection.

Of the ten works acquired in the first years after establishment, Frederick McCubbin's A bush burial is significant not only for the way it was acquired through community support and public subscription, but also as an acknowledged masterpiece depicting a heroic narrative set within the Victorian landscape, by one of the first generation of Australian born painters and a member of the so-called 'Heidelberg Group'.

oil on canvas, 122.5 x 224.5cm

Images of Geelong and the region are a key collecting area for Geelong Gallery and this painting of the coastal area of Lorne is one of the most recent acquisitions.

Streeton's depiction of the shimmering summer sky, its intense blue hue, the seemingly effortless painting of the trunks and canopies of slender young gum trees and how in this work we look down from a cliff top to the pristine beach below, all make for a stunning composition.

Lorne certainly provided the Streeton family with a memorable summer interlude in 1921 when this work was painted. The artist himself thought so highly of Ocean blue, Lorne that he retained it in the family's possession for decades and later featured it in a deluxe publication of his finest works.

The landscape tradition features widely through the Geelong Gallery collection and this contemporary work merges aspects of an historical approach to landscape painting with imagery that suggests the contemporary digital age.

Referencing Albert Bierstadt's The Morteratsch Glacier (1895), Daverington seeks to emphasise how the natural landscape exists as an idea, which was in part used to promote European immigration to the New World of the Americas and Australasia. This painting proposes that the 'New Frontier' is the digital space of technology which is depicted as rising from below the natural landscape.

oil and enamel on canvas, 183 x 152.8cm

Geelong Gallery has benefitted greatly from a number of significant bequests throughout its history. In 1987 the bequest of well-known local citizen Dorothy McAllister included fine examples of ceramics and metalwork as well as a generous fund for the gallery's use, specifically for the purpose of developing a collection of painted porcelain.

A fine example of the idiom is that of the Buckingham Palace card tray by renowned manufacturer Worcester. Featuring an architectural view of one of Britain's most significant buildings in a tranquil setting including people wandering through the ground and ducks and swans in the lake, the tray has baroque scroll-moulded borders and a green ground.

hand-painted and gilded porcelain, 6 x 33.7 x 23cm

As one of Australia's most acclaimed photographers, Polixeni Papapetrou has developed an extraordinary corpus of work which is characterised by a longstanding collaboration with her children, often engaging her daughter, son and their friends as subjects for works.

While Papapetrou's earlier photographs positioned the subject in front of a painted backdrop within the studio, since 2006 she has engaged with the Australian landscape, staging her elaborate narratives within various settings - from grand mountainous vistas to harvested fields and native bushland regenerating from fire.

In the Wimmera 1864 #1 from the Haunted Country series is amongst the earliest works by the artist to have been staged in the Australian landscape and is one in which she explores the narrative of the 'lost child'. The work references the story of three children lost in Mallee scrub near their home outside Horsham in the Wimmera District and is reminiscent, as the artist intends, of Frederick McCubbin's late 19th century paintings of children lost or at least wandering absent-mindedly through the Australia bush.

pigment ink print, 105 x 105cm

Painted in 1872, at a time when Buvelot was considered the colony’s leading landscape artist, On the Woods Point Road depicts an everyday exchange within the landscape. Travellers on horseback and within a coach traverse a muddy track, while further signs of the settlement of the area (north-east of Melbourne, with the peaks of the Great Dividing Range in the distance) are evident through the clearing.

A major painting in its own right and representative of Buvelot’s loosely-worked style. Stylistically, and within the history of Australian art, this this work acts as a mid-point between two of Geelong Gallery’s most iconic works: the precision of von Guerard’s View of Geelong, and the more impressionistic style of a Heidelberg School artist such as McCubbin as seen in A bush burial.

oil on canvas, 108.5 x 153.5cm

In 1947, when Russell Drysdale and fellow artist Donald Friend first visited the former New South Wales gold-mining towns of Sofala and Hill End, Friend made sketches of the picturesque and dilapidated buildings while Drysdale took photographs of the romantically ruinous streetscapes.

Both were captivated by the ambience of these quintessential inland Australian townships with their dilapidated and abandoned buildings. Drysdale completed his Hill End and Sofala paintings back in his Sydney studio. This work is acknowledged as one of the finest of the series.

Inspired both by the example set by Friend and Drysdale and by the enduring nostalgic appeal of these old towns, artists today are still drawn to paint these same vernacular subjects, with some taking up residencies in Hill End offered for this very purpose.

oil on composition board, 76.1 x 101.2cm

JH McPhillimy and HP Douglass Bequest Funds, 1952

Acquired to commemorate Geelong Gallery’s centenary in 1996, this major painting sees a return to Brack’s series of ‘postcard’ works commenced in the mid-1970's, soon after his first overseas travels. Of particular significance are the large scale reproductions purchased by the artist from the British Museum depicting wall reliefs from the royal palaces of the Neo-Assyrian kings Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal. These reproductions provided the source material for The Hunt.

Alluding to the often fragmentary nature by which we engage with—and absorb information about—historical cultures, Brack precariously balances more than thirty postcards reproducing fragments of the frieze-like panels depicting royal bull and lion hunts. Each postcard sits atop a formation of coloured pencils: Brack’s composition suggesting that should one of the pencils dislodge, ancient civilization itself might collapse. The arrangement teeters on a tilted marble tabletop, positioned on a black and white chequered floor (the latter alluding to parallels between the strategies of a chess game and the hunting of the animals depicted on the postcards).

oil on canvas, 182 x 152.3cm

Geelong Gallery centenary acquisition, purchased through public subscription, 1996

The dramatic coastline of western Victoria and an important aspect of the region’s history come together in Buckley’s Cave - a work inspired by Senbergs’ personal connection to the region and his interest in the life of escaped convict William Buckley who lived with the local Wathaurong people for some three decades in the early 1800's.

Senbergs acknowledges Buckley’s significance to Indigenous people by depicting him assuming the stance of the subject as depicted by Indigenous artist Tommy McRae (Kwatkwat) in the circa 1870 ink drawing, Buckley Ran Away from the Ship.

In Senbergs’ painting, Buckley stands within the opening of his cave, sited between the crashing ocean waves and a serene, sandy beach: effectively a metaphor for the perceived wildness and civility of the two worlds he inhabited.

synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 197.8 x 258.9cm

Gift of Sharon Grey and John Hall through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2014

The title of Davila’s work (and the freshly dug grave glimpsed in the middle distance) derives from Frederick McCubbin’s iconic 1890 painting A bush burial, acquired by the Geelong Gallery in 1900. Davila’s version is part of his Love’s Progress series of large-scale canvases that chronicle episodes in the imagined life of the artist’s alter ego Juanita Laguna, the dishevelled, transgender figure whose reflection we see in the broken mirror.

With its assorted pictorial allusions and text, Davila’s A bush burial acknowledges the range of political, cultural, sexual, psychological and artistic issues that inform much of the artist’s practice. Given Davila’s own relocation to Australia in response to an oppressive regime in his native Chile, the issue of migration and the plight of the refugee is a familiar focus for his often confronting narratives. Here, for example, the figure of Juanita has arrived at the gateway to a new and promised land only to have his/her luggage torn open, brutally examined and held to scorn, or so it appears, by a burly, bare-chested customs official wearing a slouch-hat and accompanied by a savage dog.

oil on canvas, 200 x 260cm

Gift of the Helen Mcpherson Smith Trust and the Geelong Gallery Foundation, 2001

Wild Colonial Boys addresses aspects of Australia’s colonial history, notably the impact of European settlement on Indigenous lands and people. The dual portraits of half-length figures clad in 18th century uniforms shows one of them set against an Australian landscape with a stand of native pines, while the other figure is depicted against an otherwise blank canvas.

Executed in the artist’s familiar style of thick impasto and expressive brushstrokes, the two subjects of Ryan’s composition gaze intently at the viewer with a mix of bravado and awkwardness.

As the artist states, "We see them dressed in their fine uniforms, looking self-satisfied. The truth is they are totally unprepared for the harsh realities of survival in this strange and unyielding new land. Maybe they should be mild colonial boys. They look like they spend more time in front of a mirror than out taming the jungle."

oil on canvas (diptych), 100 x 100cm each

Acquired through the Geelong contemporary art prize (acquisitive prize), 2012

Scottish-born painter and decorator, Alexander Webb, was also an amateur artist who produced several landscapes and streetscapes, including this 1872 view of Yarra Street in Geelong with intimate vignettes of the population going about their daily business.

Webb would have known many of the individuals depicted including such notable characters as retired Sailing Captain, William Keller, who suffered from severe arthritis and is seen here riding in a goat-cart specially made for him or the Aboriginal figure, possibly King Billy, the last of the Barrabool tribe, who is in the process of selling one of his boomerangs to an interested rider.

watercolour, 48.9 x 73cm

Gift of the artist's grandchildren, 1932

Born at Inverleigh, near Geelong, and a student of the local Gordon Technical College, Northfield was among the most highly regarded poster designers working in Australia in the early-to-mid 20th century. While receiving a number of commissions throughout his career, it is the travel posters designed in the 1930's to promote various holiday and leisure destinations for which he is best known.

Commissioned by the Victorian Railways to promote Geelong as a holiday destination accessible by train, Northfield’s design features the city’s Eastern Beach - its distinctive landmarks such as the fountain, kiosk and Art Deco stairway are reduced to simplified forms and rendered in vibrant colours. The visual representations of leisurely activities such as swimming and boating are reinforced by the text identifying Geelong as ‘The city with a holiday charm’.

colour lithograph on canvas-lined paper, 100.7 x 63.4cm

Purchased through donations, 2009

Representative of Geelong Gallery’s longstanding commitment to collecting the work of Australian printmakers, Thake’s An Opera House in Every Home is one of forty of the artist’s annual Christmas cards acquired in 1986 with the support of two of the gallery’s key membership groups - the Friends of the Gallery and the Gallery Grasshoppers.

Each year, from 1941 to 1980, Thake created and distributed his unique Christmas cards—initially taking the form of linocuts and from 1975 lithographs—that combined his clever wit and distinctive visual style. An Opera House in Every Home is one of his best-known works from the series; it celebrated Christmas 1972, the year before the Sydney Opera House was officially opened. Here he likens the sail-like structures of Jørn Utzon’s distinctively-designed building to dishes drying in a dish-rack, with the water in the adjoining sink representing Sydney Harbour.

linocut, 13.7 x 21cm

Gift of the Friends of the Gallery and the Gallery Grasshoppers, 1986

Since 1997, the Geelong acquisitive print awards have been a significant initiative through which a large number of contemporary Australian prints have been acquired for the collection. It followed an earlier permutation staged from 1962–75 which established Geelong Gallery as the first public gallery in Australia to initiate a prize for contemporary printmaking.

Rew Hanks’ extraordinarily detailed linocut We Don’t Have To —acquired through the prize in 2003— appropriates Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve (a 1504 engraving in which Dürer explores ideas relating to the perfect human form through the symbolism of the Biblical figures of the first man and woman). In his own interpretation, Hanks replaces Adam with a representation of Mike Archer, former director of the Australian Museum and advocate of the proposal to clone the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), extinct since 1936, using DNA samples. Eve is replaced with a likeness to Queen Victoria—a reference to Imperialism—and holds an embryonic thylacine in a jar.

As one of Australia’s leading silversmiths, Geelong’s Edward Fischer manufactured an enormous variety of objects including an outstanding series of gold cups, commissioned by the Geelong Racing Club from 1873–90.

The design differed each year and highlighted his skills as a master goldsmith. The 1890 version has a cup-shaped bowl standing on a beaded and engraved central column. Like the body, the open scroll-worked handles are skillfully engraved and have applied leaf decoration. The lid has applied decoration of bronzed gold jockey caps and horse shoes and is surmounted by a cast horse and jockey finial. In recent years the gallery has secured archival material pertaining to Fischer’s Geelong studio.

gold, 44.9 x 18.4 x 17.4cm

Purchased through the Dorothy McAllister Bequest Fund with the assistance of Geelong Racing Club, 1996

After service in the Second World War in the Royal Australian Air Force, Lenton Parr studied art at the Royal Melbourne Technical College (later RMIT University) and from 1955 to 1957 was in Britain working as an assistant in the studio of the great modernist sculptor Henry Moore.

After his return to Australia, Parr joined forces with other progressive Melbourne-based sculptors to form the Centre Five group that, from the 1960s onwards, promoted modernist ideals in sculpture and advocated for more architectural and public commissions to be awarded to local sculptors.

For Parr, the important early influence of the welded steel sculpture of the Spaniard Julio Gonzales and of British modernists such as Reg Butler, Lyn Chadwick and Eduardo Paolozzi was complemented by an enduring admiration for the sleek and spare industrial aesthetic of agricultural machinery. In later years, Parr’s visual language was based almost entirely on a compositional mode that could shape simple plates, strips and rods into sculptures no less animated than his earlier organic abstractions.

painted steel, 17.3 x 56 x 21.6cm

Purchased through donations, 2012

Forming part of Geelong Gallery’s significant collection of Belleek Pottery, which includes tablewares as well as centerpieces, this rare early Tazza on Flowered Pedestal embodies the superb artistic and technical skills for which Belleek is greatly admired.

The elegant classical shape of the distinctively white body with its fluted bowl and square base, is enhanced by simple decorative designs including the beading at the foot; embossed flower; porcelain ram’s heads at the base of each handle; and a delicate, hand-made roses and daisies garland encircling the column—all of which endow the object with a sumptuous, ornate quality.

porcelain, 22.5 x 20.5 x 16cm

Gift of Dr Robert and Catherine Edwards, 2005

Geoffrey Edwards, Director of Geelong Gallery discusses the gallery's origins in the late 1800's through to contemporary times, focusing on paintings, porcelain and photography from its significant collection of some 6000 items.

The video features artworks by Eugene von Guerard, Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Peter Daverington, Worcester ceramic manufacturers and Polixeni Papapetrou.