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

(Petrel Cove) 1925
Signed and dated lower right in watercolour "Hans Heysen/1925". Not titled.
image 33.2 (h) x 41.0 (w) cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 1965.51
© Hans Heysen, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

For two weeks in August 1925, after the death of their third daughter, Heysen and his family visited the resort town of Victor Harbor, on the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide. Here, he painted the watercolour Petrel Cove. Sitting on the grass of the saddle of The Bluff at Rosetta Head Heysen painted this winter landscape looking south-west across Petrel Cove towards King Head and Newland Head. Writing to Lionel Lindsay in late 1925 he enthused: ‘You would love the grandeur of this coastline, could you but see it, with something barren and primitive in the contour of the land’.

Rebecca Andrews