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Country & Landscape
The words ‘country’ and ‘landscape’ are both used to express a sense of place. For Indigenous Australians, ‘country’ specifically expresses the sustaining relationship that exists between people and place. ‘Landscape’ is a more European term, and can include abstract philosophical or aesthetic interpretations. Whose ‘place’—Indigenous or European Australians—is it that is being shown in the image?

Dominated by a magnificent gum tree, this view of Glover’s Tasmanian farm mixes naturalism and idealism. With no suggestion of hardship or struggle depicted within the painting, it is an advertisement of colonial achievement and prosperity.

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Australian Landscape with Cattle:
the Artist’s Property, Patterdale, c.1835
oil on canvas; 76.7 x 114.6 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection
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Corroborees fascinated European settlers. They were the most ‘picturesque’ of Indigenous activities. Glover made many sketches of these events, and executed a number of paintings. The writhing gum-tree heightens the exotic effect.

Here, literally, is a Garden of Eden: an unthreatening wilderness where Aboriginals appear to lead a life untroubled by white settlement.

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Corroboree c. 1840
oil on canvas; 55.5 x 69.4 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection
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A 'biblical' evocation of European settlement.

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John Glover (1767–1849)
The Eden [1829?]
pen, ink and wash drawing; 17.4 x 25.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection
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The original Ouse River flows through York in England. Its namesake in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), is a wilderness setting where the Aboriginal people are a part of nature; and the river part of their country.

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On the Oose [Ouse] River 1834?
pen, ink and wash drawing; 17.8 x 26.5 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection
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