Painted in London in 1914, this evocative rendering of a twilight landscape harks back to Long’s celebrated Australian symbolist paintings of the 1890s. As the title of the work signifies, Long’s concern was to convey the poetic by capturing the mood of a specific time of day.

Ostensibly a view of settlement glimpsed between trees and across an expanse of water, the real subject of The hour of romance is the expression of a feeling about the Australian landscape as a magical place of softened light. That this is an idealised view, and not a realistic rendering of a specific place, becomes apparent when the composition of the finished work is compared with its study (Cbus Collection of Australian art). The moon is now inescapably the centre of the painting and this, together with the lowering of the horizon line to privilege the sky and silhouetted trees, and the delicacy of the broken brushwork, makes clear that Long was captivated by the painterly challenge of capturing the atmospheric effects of moonlight on the scene.

The restrained palette also reinforces the mood of reverie in this pastoral scene, and aligns it with contemporary Australian writers’ descriptions of Australia, such as Dorothea Mackellar’s 1904 ‘opal hearted country’ and A.G. Stephens’s ‘Land of Faded Things – of delicate purples, delicious greys, and dull, dreamy olives and ochres’ in The Bulletin story book (1902).

The composition of a massed group of trees on one side, counterbalanced by a small copse framing a view of a stretch of water, and with signs of habitation on the far shore, is one that Long adapted from his study of other artists, particularly Camille Corot’s The bent tree c 1855–60 (NGV) and the English painter Alfred East’s The valley of the Lambourne 1902 (AGNSW). This can be seen in earlier works such as Sydney Harbour view (cat 28), as well as in many of his later prints.

Melissa Harpley

Painted in London in 1914, this evocative rendering of a twilight landscape harks back to Long’s celebrated Australian symbolist paintings of the 1890s. As the title of the work signifies, Long’s concern was to convey the poetic by capturing the mood of a specific time of day.

Ostensibly a view of settlement glimpsed between trees and across an expanse of water, the real subject of The hour of romance is the expression of a feeling about the Australian landscape as a magical place of softened light. That this is an idealised view, and not a realistic rendering of a specific place, becomes apparent when the composition of the finished work is compared with its study (Cbus Collection of Australian art). The moon is now inescapably the centre of the painting and this, together with the lowering of the horizon line to privilege the sky and silhouetted trees, and the delicacy of the broken brushwork, makes clear that Long was captivated by the painterly challenge of capturing the atmospheric effects of moonlight on the scene.

The restrained palette also reinforces the mood of reverie in this pastoral scene, and aligns it with contemporary Australian writers’ descriptions of Australia, such as Dorothea Mackellar’s 1904 ‘opal hearted country’ and A.G. Stephens’s ‘Land of Faded Things – of delicate purples, delicious greys, and dull, dreamy olives and ochres’ in The Bulletin story book (1902).

The composition of a massed group of trees on one side, counterbalanced by a small copse framing a view of a stretch of water, and with signs of habitation on the far shore, is one that Long adapted from his study of other artists, particularly Camille Corot’s The bent tree c 1855–60 (NGV) and the English painter Alfred East’s The valley of the Lambourne 1902 (AGNSW). This can be seen in earlier works such as Sydney Harbour view (cat 28), as well as in many of his later prints.

Melissa Harpley