Title

John Mather 1848-1916; The bath, Healesville 1896

Author

Butler, Roger.

Source

Gray, Anne (ed.), Australian art in the National Gallery of Australia. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2002

Details

page 97.

Publication date

2002

Type

Essay/article

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Although etchings were occasionally produced by Australian artists, they were not regularly exhibited until the 1880s. The etching revival or painer etchers movement in England was well known through art magazines, but it was the French tradition relayed by American artists that was most influential. The tradition of the Babizion school where people were depicted as having a relaxed understanding of their relationship with the countryside was apt for Australia in the 1890s. 

The inhospitable, ‘weird malacology’ of the Australian bush, had become a friendly place, a park-like setting where weekend visitors might spend the afternoon walking bush tracks, painting and perhaps bathing naked in the rejuvenating waters of a clear running stream. The bucolic etching The bath, Healesville is of a popular Bathing place on the Watts River.

Mather was one of the many artists who set up camp on the fringe of urban settlement. He frequently visited Coranderrk, near Healsville northeast of Melbourne, an area known for hop growing, the hop kilns being picturesque additions to the semi-rural landscape. It was also an Aboriginal reserve, the mission houses and cultivated gardens were seen at the time as being further symbols of the ‘taming of nature’. As well as images such as The bath, Heaelsville, Mather also etched portraits of the Aboriginal people in the settlement.

Melbourne had a tradition in etching distict from that in Sydney. John Mather, who learned etching in Scotland, captured the carefree mood of one of the many artists' camps in The bath, Healesville where the life of the Bohemian artist is equated with an Arcadia, with natural pleasure and the untamed Australian bush.