English: Signature of American Revolutionary War general John Glover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At 13 I was able to go to the city on my own on the bus.
I remember vividly the first time I saw this painting at the Adelaide Art Gallery.
The House and Garden by John Glover.
Glover is best known now for his paintings of the Tasmanian landscape. He gave a fresh treatment to the effects of the Australian sunlight on the native bushland by depicting it bright and clear, a definite departure from the darker "English country garden" paradigm.
As children we drew houses with gardens and I think this picture tapped into my juvenile fantasies of the perfect house and garden.
As an adult I bought a large print of the painting from the South Australian Art Gallery and over the years as we travel to Launceston we have sought to find this illusive house.
I found John Glovers statue, he lived in this part of Tasmania for some time… and the image of this house was painted just 20 kms from where we are staying.
So we drove through stunningly beautiful country to find the subject of the painting. We found an old building that looked similar… but was it the model? I don't know. There are so many of them.
However on that quiet country road lapped by green fields we saw crops that you may have never seen before.
Opium.
Tasmania is the world's largest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market. About 500 farmers grow the crop supplying the market with about 50 percent of the world's raw material for morphine and related opiates.
Its a beautiful sight when the crop is in bloom.
Strange but true.
I wonder what John Glover would have thought.?
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Hi Pammy,
I haven’t been back to Tasmania since I visited the Island on a school geography excursion back when I was at high school. I love that painting. My great, great, great, grandfather was a NCO in the English Army who were sent to help set up the first colony in 1803. He was a Scot, Lachlan Ross, who arrived in Australia in 1790. He and his son died in 1812 in the British/American war . His daughter, Mary born 1799, was my great, great grandmother. HIs wife’s maiden name was Mary Anne Holland! We don’t think of people traveling around the world back then but there seems to have been a lot of people on the move.
You never know honey we could be related by marriage.