Untitled (Panorama no.2). June 16, 1994
oil and beeswax on canvas
46.5
x 152.0
cm
inscribed with date 'June 16' and monogram 'W 94' all (lower right)
SOLD
Provenance
Sherman Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney
Exhibited
'Philip Wolfhagen - Passages', Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 29 June-30 July 1994, cat. 14
'Untitled (panorama no.2)', June 16 depicts the Central Plateau Lakes in Tasmania. Philip Wolfhagen has returned to this subject frequently in his work and it informs a series of paintings he produced throughout the 1990s. The artist's oil on canvases do not simply offer observations or studies of the landscape. Instead, Wolfhagen's practice emerges from a private obsession with land and country; a deeply experienced, personal and enduring engagement with the Australian landscape. It is as though, by looking across this panoramic painting, we are seeing his Tasmania with his eyes.
'Untitled (panorama no.2)' is a work that not only speaks the language of the landscape, but also of paint. Using oil and beeswax, the artist has deftly created a dense surface that is somber in mood and tonality, and yet captures the changing light across the land. Although Philip Wolfhagen's work only came to the attention of critics in the early 1990s, he is regarded as one of the most significant and outstanding landscape painters in Australia.