"This remarkable exhibition tells the story of the art of Austrian-born artist Eugene von Guerard, the preeminent landscape painter of colonial Australia. It focuses on his life of travel and adventure, through the sketchbooks that he treasured, books that offer a glimpse into the heart and mind of one of our greatest and most enduringly relevant artists.Von Guerard travelled extensively throughout south-eastern Australia, methodically recording the landscape, trekking into some of he wildest and least-known portions of Australian territory his pencil and pocket-sized sketchbooks always close at hand. Back in the studio, he transformed his sketches into meticulously executed paintings which are remarkable for their detail.During his twenty-eight years in Australia, he filled twenty-two sketchbooks with drawings that capture his sense of wonder at the diversity and beauty of the natural environments through which he travelled. The stories told through his sketchbooks provide the theme of the exhibition.This exhibition offers the visitor the rare opportunity to trace the evolution of a work from the sketchbook to the final studio painting, in examples which include some of von Guerard best known and most important paintings.In addition to works from the Art Gallery of Ballarat, the exhibition will feature generous loans of drawings and sketchbooks from the State Library of Victoria and the State Library of New South Wales. The exhibition will include paintings from the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Geelong Gallery, Warrnambool Art Gallery and Benalla Art Gallery as well as from private collectors, some of which will be seen on public exhibition for the first time.The exhibition will feature a beautifully produced catalogue, lavishly illustrated with both sketchbook drawings and finished oil paintings and with text by Dr Ruth Pullin." -- Art Gallery of Ballarat website, viewed 20 April 2018.

Content:
Foreword -- Introduction -- The traveller as collector -- The sketchbooks -- Albums and independent drawings -- The primacy of drawing -- Starting out : the Italian journey -- From Vienna to Rome -- Rome : "the promised land" -- Von Guerard in Naples -- From Naples to Dusseldorf : sketchbooks X and XI -- Rheinromantik : the travelling artist in the Rhineland -- Oil sketching from nature : das Neandertal -- Travels on the Rhine -- The Eifelreise -- The Harzreise and the Ruhr Valley -- Compositions drawn on winter evenings -- Australia, the Ballarat goldfields and the "lost" sketchbooks -- Sketchbook XIX, No. 1 Australia, 1852-53 : the first missing sketchbook -- Sketchbook XX, No. 2 Australia, 1853 : the second missing sketchbook -- Sketchbook XXI, No. 3 Australia, 1854 : the third missing sketchbook -- Learning the lie of the land : Melbourne, Geelong and the Dandenong Ranges -- Melbourne, its waterways and trees, 1854-57 -- The Dandenong Ranges, 1855-57 : fern trees and fern gullies -- Geelong and the Barrabool Hills, 1855 and 1856 -- The Lal Lal Falls, the Moorabool Falls and the You Yangs, 1856 -- "Over the water" : Tasmania, the Murray and Milford Sound -- Tasmania and an antipodean "Isle of Staffa", 1855 -- South Australia, 1855 : from the the sea to the Murray -- New South Wales, 1859 : the "grand theatre of tropical nature" in the Illawarra -- Across the Tasman : New Zealand and Milford Sound -- "On horseback and on foot" : Victoria's western district and the Goulburn -- Mount Rouse and Tower Hill, 1855 -- From Warrnambool to Mount Zero, 1856 -- The Camperdown region, 1857 -- The western district to Mount Gambier, 1857 -- Following the Goulburn River and its tributaries, 1862 -- On expedition with an explorer and a scientist -- On expedition with Alfred Howitt -- On expedition with Georg von Neumayer -- In word and pigment : the diaries and the oil sketches -- The sketchbooks as diaries -- Excursion to Ballarat, Yalla-y-Poora, Daylesford, Ararat and the Pyrenees, 1864 -- To Mount Arapiles, the Wimmera and the northern Grampians, 1868 -- The oil studies at Cape Schanck -- The English sketchbooks -- The journey home, 1882 -- Von Guerard in England -- Travel, memory and the sketchbooks.
"Published in association with the exhibition 'Eugene von Guerard : artist-traveller', 24 March 2018-27 May 2018, Art Gallery of Ballarat" -- colophon. Includes bibliographical references and index.