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Details
- Other Titles
- Gold fossicking
Cradling
The gold puddlers
Gold fossickers - Place where the work was made
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Creswick
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Victoria
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Australia
- Date
- 1893
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on canvas on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 67.0 x 49.6 cm board (irreg.); 95.1 x 77.2 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.l., brown oil "Walter Withers/ 93".
- Credit
- Gift of the Australian Securities Exchange 2012
- Location
- South Building, ground level, Grand Courts
- Accession number
- 235.2012
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Walter Withers
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
'Seeking for gold - cradling' is a heroic depiction of the Australian worker and landscape. It presents two men fossicking for gold in a stream, saturated in brilliant sunlight. Each man is using a gold cradle - a box on inclined rockers containing metal sieves, which was moved by hand to process soil, capturing gold in the base of the cradle.
After arriving in Melbourne in 1883, English-born Walter Withers continued his studies at the National Gallery School. He became a central member of the Heidelberg group of artists and was a strong advocate of plein-air painting. In January 1893 Withers held outdoor painting classes in the gold mining town of Creswick, Victoria. Here he painted landscape and mining subjects including 'Seeking for gold - cradling', demonstrating his affinity with the Australian landscape. Other related works by Withers are held in the National Gallery of Australia and the City of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
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Places
Where the work was made
Creswick
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Victorian Artists' Society April Exhibition, Victorian Artists Society, Melbourne, Apr 1893 -
Grand Courts collection rehang, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Nov 2021–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 3 publications
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Andrew Mackenzie, Famous australian art: Walter Withers, 1854-1913, Brisbane, 1989, 10, 11 (colour illus.). titled 'Cradling'
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Andrew Mackenzie, Walter Withers: the forgotten manuscripts, 'A short biography of Walter Withers', pg. 105-137, Lilydale, 1987, 41 (colour illus.), 120, 129. titled 'Cradling'
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Victorian Artists Society (Compilator), Victorian Artists' Society April exhibition 1893, Melbourne, Apr 1893, 8, 9 (illus.). titled 'Seeking for Gold - Cradling'; cat.no. 6; priced 20 guineas (illustration is a line engraving).
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