How does this artwork elucidate its Significance?
The content of all of Hans Heysen's art and certainly to a great extent Droving Into the Light concerns itself largely with the Australian identity and pride of the Australian nation. A German born artist, Heysen moved with his family to Australia in July 1884, aged only six. He came to fall in love with his new home of South Australia, its nature and lifestyle, which defined the majority of his life, playing a major role in his artistic inspiration.Due to the pride Heysen held for his nation of Australia, it is known that he channelled this passion into his painting, and this is evident within Droving Into the Light through the statement it makes about Australia and the shaping of its history. His use of nationalistic symbols and motifs such as the drover and the river red gum trees works to create a perennial representation of Federation Australia. Composed in a period which defined the Australian identity, mainly due to the events of World War I, Droving Into the Light is considered as a symbol of Australia's Federation period.
Hans Heysen’s landscapes were ground breaking in their time and helped the way we view the Australian landscape. Heysen made the monumental gum tree a hero of his nationalistic Federation-period pieces
Droving Into the Light has influenced the works of other Australian artists and writers, including Kim Scott and his ekphrasis of the painting in his short story Into the Light. The symbolic use of light within the painting serves as the inspiration for Scott's story, also set in a grand Australian landscape. Nathanael Pree's analysis of the painting's details for the purpose of studying Scott's ekphrasis further expose the meaningful contrasts within Droving Into the Light that represent the condition of life in young federation Australia; the faceless man hunched over the horse, the black dog that follows, elements which "inform the work as much as the promised light ahead."Thus, the painting can be considered symbolic of a journey, the journey on which Australians found themselves on in discovering their national identity, and one which inspired such works as that of Kim Scott, proving its significance to Australian history.
Hans Heysen World War I river red gum Nathanael Pree Nathanael Pree's German ekphrasis Federation Australia drover South Australia Kim Scott