The Yarra Footbridge
Abram Louis Buvelot
Details
- Artist
- Abram Louis Buvelot
- Title
- The Yarra Footbridge
- Year
- 1866
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Size
- 25 x 35 cm
Provenance
unknown
Fine Australian Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, Sotheby's Australia, Melbourne, 29 May 1984, cat. no. 24 as The Botanic Gardens Melbourne
Peter Yunghanns, Melbourne
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 1997
private collection, Queensland
Exhibited
Annual Collectors’ Exhibition 1997, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 1997, cat. no. 1
Further Information
Buvelot has been called ‘the father of Australian landscape painting’, in part due to his tendency to paint en plein air and to depict the Australian landscape more as it appeared rather than restyled through European eyes. His drawings in particular are intimate portraits of the landscape. Importantly, his influence as a teacher and model for younger artists such as Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and John Ford Paterson amongst others, lays claim to his paternal significance.
In The Yarra Footbridge, Buvelot depicts the bustling activities around the Yarra Footbridge, connecting the emerging city with the Botanical Gardens. Buvelot’s scene is inhabited with picnic makers, rowers, pedestrians leisurely promenading over the bridge, cattle drinking from the river and the punt service, giving the name Punt Road to the track leading downhill to the river.
The Yarra Footbridge was located somewhere near the present Morell Bridge. It was severely damaged by a series of floods and was replaced around 1866 by an iron girder bridge.