RIVERS 2001.056

This modestly scaled painting is remarkably rich in references to both Australian art and the lush rainforest region of south-east Queensland depicted, whose Traditional Owners are the Wanggeriburra clan of the Yugambeh people. 

The stippled brushstrokes Rivers has used to denote tree-fern fronds are a nod to the impressionist style of his southern contemporaries, notably Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. Ferns have featured in Australian art since colonisation and were particularly popular during Queen Victoria’s reign, when ‘fern fever’ (or pteridomania) took hold of the public imagination. The motif appeared on furniture, in silverware and in paintings such as Eugene von Guérard’s Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong ranges 1857 and Louis Buvelot's Near Fernshaw 1873 (both National Gallery of Australia, Canberra). It was further popularised by Nicholas Caire, who photographed fern gullies in south-eastern Victoria in the late 1800s.

The pathway Rivers has suggested in the foreground of the painting is an indication that, by the early 1900s, with progressively improved rail transport to the area, Tamborine Mountain had become a destination for day-trippers and naturalists alike.