In The Squatter's Daughter (Lambert), how is the Reception discussed?
When the “Squatter’s Daughter” was first shown, to the best of my knowledge, only three Australian artists proclaimed its originality and truth. Such a break with suave sentiment and surface drawing met with a protective opposition – here was almost an attack upon established income. It was pronounced hard, untrue, unsympathetic. To-day we know this landscape to possess the largest local truth, supreme draughtsmanship and design, and to exhale the very spirit of Australia.
The first exhibition of The Squatter's Daughter "created a stir" with its formalist approach to the Australian landscape. Howard Ashton was critical of the painting claiming that it lacked emotion. Another critic commented: "The Lambert landscape, The Squatter’s Daughter, will be of unique interest … as representing a direct break with the Streeton convention" while Hans Heysen remarked that the painting was "different from anything else painted in Australia" and later that it was "an object lesson for the young landscape painters of Australia".
Hans Heysen Streeton Howard Ashton