Louis Buvelot Australian, 1814-1888 Trawool between Tallarook and Yea oil on canvas signed and dated 1880 lower left Provenance: Sotheby's, Fine Australian Paintings, Melbourne, 26/11/1990, Lot No. 262 Mark Widdup Fine Art October 1993 ( $77,000 )
BUVELOT, LOUIS (EIGTL. ABRAM-LOUIS BUVELOT) (Morges 1814 - 1888 Melbourne) : "The Kalighat Kali Temple on the Hoogly, Calcutta"; Aquarell; 23,5x30,5 cm (LM); sig. u. dat. 1855 u.l., verso a. Etikett betitelt
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) NORTHCOTE BY SIDE OF BRUNSWICK, MELBOURNE, 1871 oil on canvas on panel 25.5 x 36.0 cm signed and dated lower centre: L Buvelot / 1871 PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Australian Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Victoria Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 16 April 2008, lot 19 Private collection, Adelaide RELATED WORK Northcote, Merri Creek, 1866, pencil, 14.0 x 23.0 cm, formerly in the collection of Mde Buvelot, illus. in Gray, J., Louis Buvelot: His Life and Work, MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 1977, vol. 2, cat. 193, p. 124 ESSAY We are grateful to Brenda Martin Thomas, wife of the late David Thomas AM, for kindly allowing us to reproduce David's writing in this catalogue entry. For many colonial artists of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the appeal of the Australian landscape lay in its panoramic splendour and awe-inspiring beauty. Typical of this inclination was Eugene von Guérard who saw the hand of the creator in nature's grandeur, adopting the theme so popular to Romantics of man’s infinitesimal role in the grand scheme of things. With his French-leaning Swiss background, Louis Buvelot’s approach was entirely different, nurtured by the Barbizon School and its transcripts of nature in which the civilising hand of man is always present. While Von Guérard's aesthetic interests were the sublime, Buvelot was a master of the homely scene, those peaceful moments of the day in gentle transition to evening, of ducks by the farmyard pond, folk wending homeward as friendly smoke rises from the homestead chimney. In his day, Buvelot replaced Von Guerard as Melbourne’s most popular artist. The young Heidelberg painters Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton saw him as a father figure in the development of landscape painting. On his death in 1888 an era came to an end, popular sentiment being so great that the National Gallery of Victoria renamed their Grosvenor Gallery the Buvelot Gallery in his honour. Living in the city of Melbourne during the 1860s, Buvelot made many sketching trips into the Victorian countryside, returning to his studio to paint such large canvases as Summer Afternoon, Templestowe, 1866 one of the first works by Buvelot to be purchased for the National Gallery. By 1869 his reputation as the colony’s leading landscape artist was well established. Waterpool at Coleraine, 1871 was acquired the following year as Buvelot played an active role in the newly established Victorian Academy of Arts. Northcote by Side of Brunswick, Melbourne, 1871 belongs to this highly successful and creatively fruitful time. Although the view shows the beginnings of Northcote in the distance, the open foreground invites the eye to engage in the civilised scene of women beside a pond in the sheltered care of gums as cows graze contently nearby. The buildings speak of settlement in harmony with nature, and the blue silhouette of Mt Macedon affords a pleasing backdrop to a characteristically tranquil Buvelot scene. Two 1866 drawings of Northcote are known. Moreover, one of Buvelot’s earliest patrons, George Knowles Parker once owned a painting of Northcote. Some credit him with having ‘discovered’ the artist. Parker married Margaret Bennett, sister of Buvelot’s friend and pupil, Charles Bennett. Many of Buvelot’s works now in the Bendigo Art Gallery originally belonged to Parker and Bennett. DAVID THOMAS
§ LOUIS BUVELOT 1814-1888 Summer Afternoon, Templestowe 1867 oil on canvas signed and dated 'L. Buvelot / 1867' lower left 43 x 61 cm PROVENANCE Louis Buvelot, Melbourne Private Collection Private Collection, France Tableaux, Mobilier, Objects d'Art et de Collection, Metayer Mermoz, Nevers, 19 November 2023, lot 324 Private Collection, Adelaide, acquired from the above
Abraham Louis Buvelot (1814–1888) Rio de Janeiro, Corcovado, 1848 Öl auf Papier auf Karton unten links signiert und datiert L. Buvelot 1848 36 x 28 cm *For this lot VAT of 8,1% will also be charged on the hammer price.
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) BUSH HUTS, 1877 watercolour on paper 23.5 x 36.5 cm (sight) 53.0 x 65.0 cm (frame) signed and dated lower centre: L. Buvelot. 1877 PROVENANCE Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 25 August 1993, lot 150A (as 'Chinese Huts at Blackwood') Private collection, Sydney RELATED WORK Blackwood, 1879, pencil on paper, 27.5 x 38.5 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT, (BUSH LANDSCAPE WITH FERNS) 1879, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, SIGNED AND DATED LOWER RIGHT, 40 X 25CM, FRAME SIZE: 67 X 52CM PROVENANCE: DEUTSCHER FINE ART, 1983
LOUIS BUVELOT, (BUSH LANDSCAPE WITH FERNS) 1879, WATERCOLOUR, SIGNED AND DATED LOWER RIGHT, 40 X 25CM, FRAME SIZE: 67 X 52CM PROVENANCE: DEUTSCHER FINE ART, 1983
LOUIS BUVELOT 1814-1888 At Malvern 1878 oil on wood signed and dated 'L. Buvelot / 1878' lower centre left 26 x 39 cm frame: original, John and Thomas Thallon, Melbourne (label verso) PROVENANCE Louis Buvelot, Melbourne Mr R. Neave, Melbourne Estate of the Late F.J. Neave, Melbourne The Buvelot Collection, Arthur Tuckett & Son, 12 March 1920, lot 9 Mrs Florence Violet Hale Lawrence, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne, by descent from the above EXHIBITED Louis Buvelot Loan Exhibition: Drawings & Paintings, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 10 July 1888, no. 1
Abram Louis Buvelot (1814-1888) w/ Provenance Louis Buvelot ( Morges 3 March 1814 – Melbourne 30 May 1888), born Abram-Louis Buvelot, was a Swiss landscape painter who lived 17 years in Brazil and following 5 years back in Switzerland stayed 23 years in Australia, where he influenced the Heidelberg School of painters. Arriving in Melbourne in February 1865, Buvelot was in business as a photographer in Bourke Street for a year but soon resumed his painting. He lived for some years in Latrobe Street East, and then moved to George Street, Fitzroy. His new wife, Caroline-Julie Beguin, helped by teaching French, and presently he began to find buyers for his pictures, of whom James Smith was one of the earliest. In 1869 the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria bought two of his pictures, and in 1870 paid £131 for the Waterpool at Coleraine. In 1873, 1880 and 1884 he was awarded gold medals at exhibitions held in Melbourne, and he also received a silver medal at the Philadelphia exhibition of 1876. His reputation became established, his only interest was his work, and he went on steadily painting until his death on 30 May 1888. He was buried at the Boroondara Cemetery, where a large monument was erected in his memory. This piece is not signed but Attributed to Abram Louis Buvolot. The back has the Provenance as the Kozminsky gallery, and our vendor bought it as an Abram Louis Buvolot through Rushtons Fine Art Auctions in Sydney. Seems like a Winner ! Please view all the pictures The art itself measures 22cm wide by 15cm high
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814-1888) At Bacchus Marsh 1878 watercolour and gouache on paper signed and dated lower right: L. Buvelot 1878 signed and titled verso 25.5 x 35cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne The Estate of the above
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814-1888) Landscape with Creek Bend 1877 watercolour and gouache on paper signed and dated lower right: L. Buvelot 1877 33 x 48cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne The Estate of the above
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814-1888) Oast Houses, Tasmania 1860 watercolour on paper signed and dated lower left: L. Buvelot / 1860 titled on mount 23.5 x 33.5cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent, since 1989
Abram-Louis Buvelot (1814-1888) Original Watercolour Painting 26.5cm x 20.5cm. Louis Buvelot (1814-1888) , Original Vintage watercolour titled "Watchtower in Swiss Landscape", signed lower right. Provenance stated verso 'Purchased at an E J Ainger Sale 1968', Private Collector Melbourne, Private Collector Sydney. The painting is in excellent condition. Framed in a traditional style with glass and labeled verso. Dimensions: Image size: 26.5cm x 20.5cm, Frame size: 56cm x 45cm
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) BACCHUS MARSH PASTURE, 1876 oil on canvas 58.0 x 86.5 cm signed and dated lower left: Ls Buvelot. 1876 bears inscription on frame verso: L Buvelot. N1 framer's label attached verso: Isaac Whitehead Carver & Gilder PROVENANCE Hon. J. A. MacPherson, Victoria, acquired directly from the artist in 1876 Thence by descent Private collection, United Kingdom Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2021 LITERATURE The Argus, Melbourne, 31 July 1876, p. 4 Gray, J., Louis Buvelot: his life and work, Masters Research thesis [unpublished], VCA – School of Art, The University of Melbourne, 1977, ‘Miss Ellen Frey’s list of works [alphabetical, by title] and owners, 1904’, vol. 2, cat. 6 (as ‘Bacchus Marsh Pasture, Hon J Macpherson’) ESSAY ‘M. Buvelot has just completed for the Chief Secretary, an oil painting representing a quiet landscape at Bacchus Marsh. The features of the landscape are very simple, and but for the two white gum trees, which occupy a prominent position in the foreground, the scene might be mistaken for an English one. An amphitheatre of low wooded, and softly rounded hills encloses a verdant arena, in which a rich crop of thistles bears a not indistinct resemblance to a field of standing corn. A waterhole set in a green framework of scrub, lights up the picture pleasantly, and reflects the sheen of the summer sky, and while the tone of the picture is bright and sunny, the sentiment it breathes is one of perfect repose.’1 Within a few years of his arrival in Melbourne in 1865, aged fifty-one, Swiss-born Louis Buvelot was the most admired landscape artist working in the colony of Victoria, superseding his predecessor Eugene von Guérard, the elder by four years. In contrast to von Guérard’s carefully rendered (or to some, ‘laborious’) depictions of pastoral properties and awe-inspiring remote scenery, Buvelot was praised for being ‘disdainful of tedious detail… With the dry bed of a creek, some ragged scrub, a patch of verdure, and the rugged stem of an old gum tree he succeeds in constructing a picture which you can return to again and again with pleasure’.2 By 1870, three substantial landscapes by Buvelot had been acquired for the newly formed National Gallery of Victoria. Although von Guérard was appointed painting master for the Gallery School over Buvelot, it was Buvelot’s more fluid approach that had the greater impact among his contemporaries and successors. Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts came to regard him as ‘the father of Australian landscape painting’, McCubbin stating that ‘there was no one before him to point out the way; he possessed, therefore in himself the genius to catch and understand the salient living features of this country’.3 Buvelot first visited and began sketching the waterways, floodplains, cleared paddocks and forested hills around the small township of Bacchus Marsh, set between the Lerderderg and Werribee rivers, in autumn 1876. Although he did not paint en plein air, the numerous pencil sketches he drew – helpfully dated and titled – were the source for several oil paintings completed later that year in his Fitzroy studio. These included two views of Goodman’s Creek (Art Gallery of New South Wales, University of Melbourne) and a watercolour of the nearby Pentland Hills (Art Gallery of New South Wales), which was translated into a chromolithograph gifted to subscribers to the Art Union of Victoria.4 Buvelot was also painting to commission: one scene of Bacchus Marsh was produced for local art collector Thomas Welton Stanford, praised by a reviewer as ‘a perfect gem… the best work that has yet emanated from M. Buvelot’s studio’.5 Two months later, Bacchus Marsh pasture, 1876 was similarly praised in the media, painted on commission for John Alexander MacPherson.6 Not enough is yet known about MacPherson as a collector. Born into a pastoral family, and trained as a lawyer, he was elected to the Victorian Parliament in 1864, serving briefly as the seventh Premier of the colony (September 1869 – April 1870). Notably it was during these months that the new Public Library, Museums and National Gallery of Victoria Act was passed and MacPherson and several of his ministers were appointed trustees, a position he held until 1880. As discussed in lot 14, he was known to be acquiring art as early as 1870, and in 1876, while serving as Chief Secretary, MacPherson commissioned at least two paintings: a dramatic mountainous Gippsland view from von Guérard (now Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth),7 and this, a distinct contrast in its tranquillity and benign rusticity, the young woman tending the cows akin to a peasant in Dutch landscapes of the seventeenth century. Bacchus Marsh pasture remained with MacPherson’s descendants until recently. It is housed in its original gilt frame, demonstrating the best-known style of the pre-eminent Melbourne frame maker Isaac Whitehead.8 Buvelot’s declining eyesight prevented him from painting in his last years. He died in May 1888 and was buried in Kew Cemetery: a publicly funded monument was later erected. Only two months after his death, the National Gallery of Victoria held a commemorative retrospective, the first such exhibition of an ‘Australian’ artist.9 Few recall his early, successful career in Brazil (1835 – 52), almost equal in years to his working career in Australia but without the posthumous and continuing praise and recognition. 1. The Argus, Melbourne, 31 July 1876, p. 4 2. ‘The Exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts’, The Argus, Melbourne, 1 December 1870, p. 7 The von Guérard quote above is also from this review. 3. McCubbin cited in The Art of Frederick McCubbin, The Lothian Book Publishing Co., Melbourne, 1916, p. 85. 4. Summer evening in the Pentland Hills, 1876, chromolithograph, various collections. 5. ‘News of the day’, The Age, Melbourne, 18 May 1876, p.3. Stanford is briefly discussed in Gerard Vaughan’s ‘Art collectors in colonial Victoria 1854 – 1892: An analysis of taste and patronage’, University of Melbourne, BA Hon. thesis, 1976, pp. 16, 44 – 45. MacPherson is not mentioned. 6. Miss Frey, executor of Madame Buvelot’s estate, titled Stanford’s painting Bacchus Marsh, stream and this Bacchus Marsh, pasture, in her list L’oeuvre australienne de Louis Buvelot de Morge, 1905. See Jocelyn Gray, ‘Louis Buvelot: his life and work’, Victoria College of the Arts (University of Melbourne) MA thesis, 1977, vol. 2, n.p. 7. The Argus, Melbourne, 24 July 1876, p. 5 8. Holly McGowan-Jackson and Jessica Lehmann, ‘Framers in focus: Isaac Whitehead’, 26 July 2021, see: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/framers-in-focus-isaac-whitehead 9. One of the Gallery’s rooms (now State Library Victoria) was named the Buvelot Gallery. ALISA BUNBURY
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) PASTORAL, 1871 watercolour on paper on card 24.0 x 34.0 cm (sheet) signed and dated lower left: L. Buvelot 1871 PROVENANCE Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above on 10 December 1990 EXHIBITED The Bus Collection of Australian Art, Wollongong City Gallery, New South Wales, 16 March – 12 April 1992, cat. 3 Overland, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 10 March – 15 July 2012 Dawn to Dusk: Landscapes from the Cbus Collection of Australian Art, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 31 May – 16 November 2014 on long term loan to Wollongong City Gallery, New South Wales LITERATURE Nainby, B., Stanhope, Z., and Furlonger, K., The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, in association with Latrobe Regional Gallery, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 16, 25 (illus.), 214
A.Louis Buvelot 1814-88 watercolour landscape Victoria country scene with cattle signed and dated 1881 lower right measures 19cm H x 26cm W and including frame 34cm H x 42cm W *Buvelot was a member of the Heidelberg School
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) IN THE WESTERN DISTRICT oil on academy board 23.0 x 31.0 cm inscribed with title verso: In Western District PROVENANCE Joseph Brown Galley, Melbourne Private collection, Victoria, acquired from the above in June 1980
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) HOUSE IN SWITZERLAND, 1869 watercolour on paper 18.0 x 23.5 cm (sight) 49.5 x 53.0 cm (frame) signed and dated lower left: Buvelot / 1869 PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) HILLSIDE WITH FARM BUILDINGS watercolour on paper on card 15.0 x 24.0 cm(sight) 37.5 x 46.5 cm (frame) signed lower right: L. Buvelot PROVENANCE Private collection, Victoria This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) RURAL LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE GRAZING BY A STREAM, 1878 watercolour on paper 21.5 x 31.5 cm 53.0 x 62.0 cm (frame) signed and dated lower left: L. Buvelot 1878. PROVENANCE Private collection Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 7 March 1969, lot 30 (as ‘Pastoral’) Private collection, Adelaide This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) FIGURES OUTSIDE A FARMHOUSE watercolour on paper 14.5 x 19.0 cm 29.0 x 33.5 cm (frame) signed lower right: L. Buvelot framer’s label attached verso: John Thallon PROVENANCE Private collection Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 21 August 1996, lot 123 Private collection, Sydney This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) COLERAINE, 1876 watercolour on paper 35.5 x 55.0 cm (sight) 66.5 x 84.0 cm (frame) signed and dated lower right: L. Buvelot 1876 PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
LOUIS BUVELOT 1814-1888 The Yarra Valley 1871 watercolour on paper signed and dated 'L Buvelot 1871' lower right 21 x 30.5 cm PROVENANCE Louis Buvelot, Melbourne Private Collection Tom Silver Gallery, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above on 4 July 1983
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) THE TREE watercolour on paper 34.0 x 24.0 cm (sight) signed lower left: L. Buvelot PROVENANCE Private collection Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 26 July 1989, lot 318 Private collection, Melbourne
LOUIS BUVELOT (1814 - 1888) YOU YANGS LANDSCAPE oil on board 20.5 x 30.5 cm PROVENANCE Madame Buvelot, Melbourne Marie-Louise Bernadou, acquired from the above Thence by descent Elizabeth Bernadou, New South Wales Thence by descent Private collection, New South Wales
