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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 11

Publication Date: November 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.1011.15802.

Zhang, C. (2023). Primeval Wilderness as Consolation in Hans Heysen’s Painting. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,

10(11). 76-85.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Primeval Wilderness as Consolation in Hans Heysen’s Painting

Chunyan Zhang

School of International Chinese Language Education,

Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT

During the period of the 1920s and 1930s, representations of “authentic”, “wild”

and “primeval” nature with a positive force and a sense of genuine beauty appeared

in Australian painting, especially in the outback paintings of Hans Heysen (1877-

1968). In his works, an admiration of the outback and the bush replaced the radical

representations of the human battle against nature. This kind of representation

demonstrates the attitude of certain Australian artists towards “wild” Australian

nature (especially the outback and the bush) changed from perception of it as “alien”

and “threatening”, to a growing sense of identification with it.

Keywords: Primeval, Wilderness, Consolation, Hans Heysen

INTRODUCTION

During the period of the 1920s and early 1930s, in Australian painting, there were

representations of Australian nature as a positive force with “unique” Australian characteristics

such as “the bush” and “the outback”, bringing a sense of vitality, regeneration and consolation

to white Australians. In the colonial period, although there were also some representations of

nature as a consoling or regenerating force, nature in these representations often appeared in

“European” mode or with European references. In the nationalism of the 1880s and 1890s, a

certain view of Australianness appeared in some works of the Heidelberg painters such as Tom

Roberts (1856-1931) and Arthur Streeton (1867-1943), who captured the Australian

landscape and light in its blues and yellows. But their works, which often included European

references, mainly depicted the scenery of rural Victoria and not the true outback. What is more,

in the second half of the 1890s there was an emerging tendency to represent the Australian

landscape in dark and somber tones, or with domesticated images, even in some works of the

Heidelberg painters (e.g., the later works of Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917) in which the

emphasis shifted from bright light and colour towards subdued and low-keyed tones. As Ian

Burn argues, this tendency appeared as a Europeanizing process. [1] The Australian landscape

reappeared as an extension of the European landscape, rather than something uniquely

Australian. In this “tamed” nature and “civilized” land, there were no hints of conflict between

human beings and nature, but this harmony was achieved at the price of losing the sense of

locality and the characteristics of Australianness.

REPRESENTATION OF PRIMEVAL LANDSCAPE IN HEYSEN’S PAINTING

As an exponent of true national expression, Hans Heysen had an affinity with the primeval

Australian landscape. From 1926 to 1933 he made nine visits to the Flinders Ranges, where he

was challenged and revitalized by the nature of the terrain. It was this scenery which formed

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Zhang, C. (2023). Primeval Wilderness as Consolation in Hans Heysen’s Painting. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(11). 76-85.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1011.15802

the main focus for his oil and watercolor paintings. In his painting The Hill of the Creeping

Shadow (1929) (Fig.1), a sense of untamed beauty – vast, silent, ancient, austere and

indomitable – is conveyed through the red and yellow tones (the colour of red earth), the dark

top and the shadow of the hill, the lack of green grass or foliage, the dry creek and the cracked

land, which has been reduced by drought to skeletal outcrops but still survives. There are no

human figures in the painting, but if there had been, it is safe to say that the human figures

would definitely have been dwarfed by the presence of the force of nature. The representation

of vast spaces and silences to demonstrate nature’s force since time immemorial is achieved by

emphasizing the “bare bone” land forms, the erosion of the semi-arid land, and the weathering

of ridges and cliffs. Heysen expressed his feeling for this land in 1932 in these words:

“It was in the Flinders Ranges that I was made curiously conscious of a very old land

where the primitive forces of Nature were constantly evident. The barren hillsides,

incised and torn by Nature’s forces, hold a peculiar attraction. Their geological

structure is seldom obscured by foliage, and in many parts where great masses of

stone are piled layer on layer in regular formation, as if built up by some very

ancient people, their appearance is given an architectural order... The far Northern

interior of Australia with its stern reality of desert country holds a peculiar

fascination for many who have come under its spell, and I must confess to having

fallen a victim. I have seen it on calm days of crystalline purity when the eye could

travel, as it were, to the end of the world, bringing with it that wonderful sense of

infinity that a land of moist atmosphere could never give. There is an undeniable

call about this interior which covers by far the greater portion of Australia, and

offers, for the artist, a wide field as yet practically untouched”. [2]

Fig 1: Hans Heysen (1877-1968). The Hill of the Creeping Shadow (1929). Oil on canvas. 88.8 x

114.3 cm. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

From this paragraph it is clear that this artist’s view of wild nature is diametrically opposed to

that of the colonial painters and writers. Heysen was fascinated by its “crystalline purity”,

especially a sense of timelessness, eternity, profound silence without signs of human beings,

and otherworldliness. To him it had an undeniable call, and the practically untouched landscape

gave him a “wonderful sense of infinity”. Heysen’s The Three Sisters of Aroona (1927) (Fig.2)

also painted a landscape in which nature is primitive and unalterable, and can be read as “frozen”

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 11, November-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

in deep time. Heysen wrote to his friend Sydney Ure Smith: “everything looks so old that it

belongs to quite a different world... Fine big simple forms against clear transparent skies – and

a sense of spaciousness everywhere”. [3] But although he was struck by the simplicity of the

forms with their fierce colours, clear edges and the flat light against clear transparent skies,

what impressed him first and foremost was the unknown antiquity of the landscape which

brought a wonderful sense of infinity to him. As Heysen’s friend, the artist Lionel Arthur Lindsay

(1874-1961) observed, there was little in the science of composition that Heysen did not know,

but in the face of the nakedness of the Earth, instead of deliberate composition, Heysen used a

more direct approach, preferring spontaneous recreation after the way of nature herself. [4]

Fig 2: Hans Heysen (1877-1968). The Three Sisters of Aroona (1927). Oil on canvas. 76.0 x 90.0

cm. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

Heysen constructed a vision of the pristine and primeval in order to show that nature has the

power to renew the human mind and to console the miserable human heart. This myth of

“nature as refuge” has its origin in the misfortunes which befell his family during and after the

First World War. Before he saw the Flinders ranges, during the War, Heysen’s father was

assaulted in an Adelaide Street as a “damned German” and his wife’s brother-in-law was

interned in the “German Concentration Camp” at Liverpool, New South Wales. Heysen himself

suffered the insult of having his national loyalty and personal integrity questioned because of

his German ancestry, an experience he found deeply hurtful. The Trustees of the National Art

Gallery of N.S.W. refused to include Heysen’s works in a Loan Exhibition of Australian Art until

he “definitely and satisfactorily” declared whether his “allegiance and sympathies are with the

British Nation”. He wrote to Gruner in April, 1918: “I disliked the approach of the Gallery Board

on the question of nationality”. In 1915 the Australian Art Association, of which Hans was a

member, officially drew his attention to the “many rumours of your lack of sympathy with the

British cause” and asked him to make his position clear. During the ensuing 5 years rumours

about the potential treachery of Hahndorf, his native town, including spy rings, and the

transmission of messages to the enemy, were prevailing. [5] Subsequently his wife suffered a

nervous breakdown in 1922 and their third daughter died from meningitis in 1925. All these

misfortunes affected him to such a degree that in a letter to Lionel Lindsay he wrote: “Even

Dame Nature could arouse no response, it seemed as if we were living in another world with no

sun to give warmth or life...” [6] But in 1926 when he first visited the Flinders Ranges, he was

immediately excited by the landscape. This different “Dame Nature”, so characteristically