Hans HEYSEN
Germany 1877 – Australia 1968
Australia from 1884; Europe, England 1899-1903

The Three Sisters of Aroona 1927
watercolour on paper
Frame 76.0 (h) x 90.0 (w) x 5.0 (d) cm
Morgan Thomas Bequest Fund 1930, Art Gallery of South Australia

One morning during his visit to the Flinders Ranges in 1927, Heysen rose before sunrise, as he always did, and was spell-bound, electrified. Dawn was breaking over the ranges and the long line of hills quivered in the morning light. As sunrise approached, the caps gleamed and flared, and colour and shadow ran down their long slopes and into the gullies between. He had not been so excited for years, and he worked feverishly to get the essentials down before the scene changed and the impact weakened in the growing light. This was the first of many sketches he made of the Three Sisters of Aroona.[1] In watercolours such as The Three Sisters of Aroona 1927 he captured the sharp profiles of the hills, the clarity of the light and the intense colours. But more significantly he saw this landscape as being dateless, frozen in time. And he captured its haunting silence.

[1] Colin Thiele, Heysen of Hahndorf, Adelaide: Rigby, 1968, p 198