'But calm and lucid as an English lake,/ Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,/ Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,/ And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls … The lordly Harbour gleams … It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows/ By dells of glimmering greenness manifold', wrote the Australian poet Henry Kendall in ‘Sydney Harbour’.

Long’s painting expresses a similar poetic response to Sydney Harbour to that evoked by Kendall’s poem. The view looks across the harbour to the headlands and the city beyond. It is a still day with barely a rustle of wind in the trees, with white clouds scudding across the sky. Long wrote to A.G. Stephens on 24 February 1926 about the blue of the harbour:

It is impossible to depict the color of water. It is simply a mirror and is any old color according to the weather time of the year & the sky. Most people speak of the wonderful blue of the Harbour as though it were actually that color … but … it is colorless and simply reflects to each person his own personal [sense] of color. For my part I see it always as a mass of different colors blue green violet grey all blended in that indescribable way that makes up what most people call the blue of the Harbour.

Sydney Harbour view is suggestive, the forms are gently diffused, and the colour and arrangement are decorative. A soft light embraces the scene. The pink tints in the sky and harbour and the pale water and land almost seem to be part of the same plane. There are no people inhabiting this landscape, it is nature pure and simple: a calm, restful place, gleaming in the light.

This painting was possibly first shown in the 1907 ‘Society of Artists exhibition’ as ‘Harbour view’ (247).

'But calm and lucid as an English lake,/ Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,/ Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,/ And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls … The lordly Harbour gleams … It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows/ By dells of glimmering greenness manifold', wrote the Australian poet Henry Kendall in ‘Sydney Harbour’.

Long’s painting expresses a similar poetic response to Sydney Harbour to that evoked by Kendall’s poem. The view looks across the harbour to the headlands and the city beyond. It is a still day with barely a rustle of wind in the trees, with white clouds scudding across the sky. Long wrote to A.G. Stephens on 24 February 1926 about the blue of the harbour:

It is impossible to depict the color of water. It is simply a mirror and is any old color according to the weather time of the year & the sky. Most people speak of the wonderful blue of the Harbour as though it were actually that color … but … it is colorless and simply reflects to each person his own personal [sense] of color. For my part I see it always as a mass of different colors blue green violet grey all blended in that indescribable way that makes up what most people call the blue of the Harbour.

Sydney Harbour view is suggestive, the forms are gently diffused, and the colour and arrangement are decorative. A soft light embraces the scene. The pink tints in the sky and harbour and the pale water and land almost seem to be part of the same plane. There are no people inhabiting this landscape, it is nature pure and simple: a calm, restful place, gleaming in the light.

This painting was possibly first shown in the 1907 ‘Society of Artists exhibition’ as ‘Harbour view’ (247).