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

In the Wonoka Country 1930
oil on canvas
50.0 (h) x 75.0 (w) cm
Hamilton Art Gallery

In the Wonoka Country 1930 exhibits a sense of space with emphasis on horizontal stability and order.[1] At the centre of its wide landscape format a road crosses a creek and leads into the distance, towards immense and monumental hill formations. The purple-blue distance of the massed hills and the flat-land ‘breathing space’ of the middle distance are established by a series of horizontal planes, differentiating the area between the foreground, middle ground and background. Heysen wrote of the study for this oil painting: ‘In the “Crossing” I tried to give that ominous silence of a “brooding” late afternoon—insisting on the horizontal lines—to give expression of value.’[2]

© Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2008
Andrews, Hans Heysen, exhibition book, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2008, p 102

[1] The foreground of this view is Smith’s Creek, on Smiths Road, which leaves the Hawker–Wilpena Road two kilometres north-east of Hawker

[2] Heysen letter to Sydney Ure Smith, 14 September (no year), Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 31/4