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George Wishart / Australia 1872–1921 / A busy corner of the Brisbane River 1897 / Oil on canvas / 76 x 101.5cm / Acquired before 1962 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
George WishartA busy corner of the Brisbane River 1897
On Display: QAG, Gallery 10
A busy corner of the Brisbane River 1897 is the most significant of George Wishart’s works identified to date, and of particular interest because paintings of commercial activity on the Brisbane River are rare. The site has been identified as the Eagle Street Wharves, looking south towards the Bunya Pines in the old Botanic Gardens, and the Kangaroo Point cliffs behind.
When it was first displayed at the Queensland International Exhibition in 1897, it was highly praised as ‘decidedly one of the attractions of the gallery’, with the reviewer commenting on the ‘brilliant and sunny’ depiction of Brisbane’s wharf-side activity.1 That the light in the painting now suggests an overcast day probably indicates that the work’s tonal values have been reduced in the intervening century due to a combination of a more recent wax lining, the developing translucency of the paint surface, and a yellowing varnish.2
Endnotes:
1 The Queenslander, 15 May 1897, p.15.
2 John Hook, interview with Glenn Cooke, Brisbane, 10 August 2001.
George Wishart was born in Brisbane on 20 April 1872, the fourth of seven sons born to his Scottish migrant parents. He was taught painting by Isaac Walter Jenner, the foremost marine painter in Brisbane, and he worked professionally as a photographer in Brisbane and Bundaberg.
Wishart exhibited with the Queensland Art Society from 1892–1901 and subsequently with the New Society of Artists from 1904–07. A large portion of his artistic output focused on marine subjects around Moreton Bay or on the Brisbane River and its tributaries. Wishart probably based many of his paintings on photographic images, which was also true of other artists of this period, including his close friend Oscar Friström.