
John Glover is widely recognised as the finest painter of landscapes in the early colonial period of Australia. Born near Leicester, England, he arrived at Hobart Town, Tasmania, in 1831. Subsequently taking up a farm near Ben Lomond, he experienced the new landscape first-hand from walking, travelling and living on the land. This direct experience let him appreciate the radically different colonial landscape, moving him away from the ‘Claudean’ style into a more naturalistic colour range of oils, capturing the colour and light effects and depicting native inhabitants and vegetation. Though a romanticism often persisted in his work: for instance in his symbolist approach to depicting landscapes set with rainbows, deep shadows, setting suns or ancient eucalypts.