Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania presented for the first time

The first ever exhibition exploring award-winning landscape artist Lloyd Rees’s connection to lutruwita/Tasmania will open at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery this week.

TMAG lead curator Peter Hughes said the Lands of Light exhibition drew on the extensive collection of the Rees family, several major public galleries and private collectors to showcase Rees’s strong connection to lutruwita/Tasmania and the influence of the local landscape on his work. 

“Although primarily based in Sydney, Rees began to visit lutruwita/Tasmania regularly in 1967,” Mr Hughes said.

“For the next two decades, he found inspiration in the local landscape, particularly the light on the waters of the Derwent River in Hobart as well as kunanyi/Mount Wellington.

“Rees’s vision was highly individual and idiosyncratic, and little influenced by the artistic trends that waxed and waned throughout a long career.

“Rees sought to build on the legacy of European landscape painting while also drawing on a much younger Australian tradition.”

One of the pre-eminent Australian landscape artists of his age, Lloyd Rees (1895–1988) was a superb painter, draughtsman and printmaker and had a reputation as one of the great explorers and poets of the Australian landscape.

His work depicts the effects of light and emphasis is placed on the harmony between humans and nature.

Always respected and increasingly revered throughout his life, Rees approach shifted from the precise analytical drawings and paintings of the 1920s and 30s through the more sombre, rhythmic works of the 1940s and 50s, to the expositions of light that characterised his later works.

TMAG Director, Mary Mulcahy, acknowledged and thanked the Rees family, including Jan and Alan Rees, for their contribution to the exhibition.

“It’s fitting that the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, as the custodian of our island’s rich heritage, is showcasing this wonderful collection of works inspired by lutruwita/Tasmania,” Ms Mulcahy said.

“The result is a captivating collection of works that demonstrate the artist’s imaginative response to the Tasmanian landscape and his visionary qualities when depicting the island’s light which has inspired generations and continues to do so.”

To celebrate the opening of this new exhibition, and in partnership with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the museum will stay open until 6pm on Thursday, 7 March.

Visitors are invited to view the Lloyd Rees exhibition and enjoy refreshments and tours with the curator, Peter Hughes, before the TSO’s 6pm Series concert in Federation Concert Hall.

The Lands of Light: Lloyd Rees and Tasmania exhibition opens at TMAG on 7 March 2024 and closes on 27 October 2024.