Artwork Title: Spirit of the Plains

Spirit of the Plains, 1897

Sydney Long

In Spirit of the Plains, Sydney Long successfully introduced a mythological theme into Australian painting. The work evokes a distant, dreamlike and identifiably Australian landscape. It features the northern Australian brolga; a bird well-known for its elaborate dancing. Long’s depiction of the delicate movements performed by the bird have resulted in one of the most rhythmical and haunting images in nineteenth-century Australian art. The artist used the flat, decorative shapes of the Art Nouveau style to link the group of birds and the trees into one flat plane. He created a vision of Australia where birds and people seemed to be united by music. Long’s joyous portrayal is in striking contrast to early scientific studies of birds, common in Australian painting to that time. ...Using Art Nouveau’s stylised and organically flowing forms, Long created a fantasy world where Pan, wood nymphs and flamingos move elegantly across the canvas. In Spirit of the Plains, the Australian preoccupation with pastoral landscape and the emerging fashions of symbolism and Art Nouveau combined to produce an unusual image of Australia. (http://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/?p=3010) An Australian bush nymph leads her dancing birds through the gum-treed plains of the Australian bush, in a freize-like painting by Australian artist Sydney Long. For many years, this popular work has fascinated visitors to the Queensland Art Gallery. Notice the elaborate treble clef formation of the procession, beautifully based on a European, Art Nouveau sensibility. The dancing birds, however, are brolgas, Australian native birds, and the official bird emblem of our state of Queensland. The brolga is a member of the crane family, and a common wetland bird species in tropical and south-eastern Australia. Best known for the intricate mating dances, their performance begins with a bird picking up some grass and tossing it into the air, then catching it, jumping a metre into the air with outstretched wings, with much strutting, calling and bobbing of the head. Sometimes they dance singly, or in pairs, and and sometimes a whole group will dance together. (http://redbird-patricia.blogspot.nl/2015/12/the-brolgas.html)
Uploaded on Jul 19, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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