‘His landscape entitled “The valley” is without exception the best thing of its kind he has yet done. It is quieter in tone than usual, but charming in its wealth of harmonious colouring’, wrote the reviewer for the Daily Telegraph (27 August 1898).

Long captured the magic and poetry of the land, a valley of dreams. He depicted a view from a hillside, in the vicinity of the Hawkesbury River, looking down a valley towards the river winding its way through stands of thinning trees, with a rising moon just appearing over the rim of a distant range. Slender eucalypts frame the image on the right and lend prominence to the large area of clear sky. Long kept the composition dramatically simple by eliminating details, using rich, smooth, flattened blocks of colour and translating the river and land into solid forms — thereby giving a decorative character to the image. He broadly divided the vertical format of the composition into the land below and the sky above.

The view in The valley is similar to that in Midday (cat 6) and identical to that of The river (cat 7), but observed from a more distant vantage point and in a vertical format. As with these earlier paintings, the subject is one which Arthur Streeton also depicted in his much admired Hawkesbury River paintings. Long’s composition, however, is dissimilar to those in Streeton’s Hawkesbury subjects and closer to his ‘Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide’ 1890, which Long would have viewed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales after it was purchased in 1890. And Long is likely to have painted his work in a friendly rivalry with Streeton.

The extreme verticality in this work is typical of the Aesthetic movement and their interest in Japanese art and scrolls. So, too, is the asymmetry of the painting, with the image framed by trees on one side only. This structure is most unusual for any artist in Australia at this time, although it is occasionally also found in the work of Streeton.

The composition of The valley and ‘Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide’ is similar, but Long’s approach and palette are quite distinct. Where Streeton depicted his landscape in an impressionist manner, Long simplified it into a decorative pattern. Where Streeton adopted a blue and gold palette evoking the warmth of a sunny day, Long used the soft blue-greens and purples of the early evening. These are the ‘delicate colour harmonies’ he was to recommend for the representation of ideas ‘in a symbolic and decorative manner’ in his article, ‘The trend of Australian art considered and discussed’ (Long 1905, p 10).

The valley was first exhibited in the 1898 ‘Society of Artists exhibition’ (26, reproduced with a sketch by George W. Lambert after the painting) and again, in the same year, at the South Australian Society of Artists first Federal exhibition, from which it was purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia. The painting was one of a small group of works acquired by the Adelaide gallery at this time under the generous Elder Bequest Fund, the first large bequest given to any museum in Australia. It was the first acquisition of Long’s work by an institution other than the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

‘His landscape entitled “The valley” is without exception the best thing of its kind he has yet done. It is quieter in tone than usual, but charming in its wealth of harmonious colouring’, wrote the reviewer for the Daily Telegraph (27 August 1898).

Long captured the magic and poetry of the land, a valley of dreams. He depicted a view from a hillside, in the vicinity of the Hawkesbury River, looking down a valley towards the river winding its way through stands of thinning trees, with a rising moon just appearing over the rim of a distant range. Slender eucalypts frame the image on the right and lend prominence to the large area of clear sky. Long kept the composition dramatically simple by eliminating details, using rich, smooth, flattened blocks of colour and translating the river and land into solid forms — thereby giving a decorative character to the image. He broadly divided the vertical format of the composition into the land below and the sky above.

The view in The valley is similar to that in Midday (cat 6) and identical to that of The river (cat 7), but observed from a more distant vantage point and in a vertical format. As with these earlier paintings, the subject is one which Arthur Streeton also depicted in his much admired Hawkesbury River paintings. Long’s composition, however, is dissimilar to those in Streeton’s Hawkesbury subjects and closer to his ‘Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide’ 1890, which Long would have viewed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales after it was purchased in 1890. And Long is likely to have painted his work in a friendly rivalry with Streeton.

The extreme verticality in this work is typical of the Aesthetic movement and their interest in Japanese art and scrolls. So, too, is the asymmetry of the painting, with the image framed by trees on one side only. This structure is most unusual for any artist in Australia at this time, although it is occasionally also found in the work of Streeton.

The composition of The valley and ‘Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide’ is similar, but Long’s approach and palette are quite distinct. Where Streeton depicted his landscape in an impressionist manner, Long simplified it into a decorative pattern. Where Streeton adopted a blue and gold palette evoking the warmth of a sunny day, Long used the soft blue-greens and purples of the early evening. These are the ‘delicate colour harmonies’ he was to recommend for the representation of ideas ‘in a symbolic and decorative manner’ in his article, ‘The trend of Australian art considered and discussed’ (Long 1905, p 10).

The valley was first exhibited in the 1898 ‘Society of Artists exhibition’ (26, reproduced with a sketch by George W. Lambert after the painting) and again, in the same year, at the South Australian Society of Artists first Federal exhibition, from which it was purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia. The painting was one of a small group of works acquired by the Adelaide gallery at this time under the generous Elder Bequest Fund, the first large bequest given to any museum in Australia. It was the first acquisition of Long’s work by an institution other than the Art Gallery of New South Wales.