Charles Conder

Charles Conder painted with a light, dreamy touch: sunny beaches, parasols, pale blues and pinks, and figures that seem to drift through the scene. He was a key member of the Heidelberg School, the group that brought outdoor Impressionist painting to Australia, and later became known in Europe for delicate designs painted on silk fans.

He was born in Tottenham, England, in 1868 and was sent to Australia as a teenager, where he worked as a surveyor and then as an illustrator in Sydney. There he painted Departure of the Orient, Circular Quay, now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In Melbourne he worked alongside Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and helped organise the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition of 1889. A Holiday at Mentone, from 1888, is one of his best known Australian pictures.

He moved to Paris in 1890, studied at the Académie Julian and mixed with Toulouse-Lautrec and the aesthetes of the day. He died in England in 1909.