PIGUENIT
WILLIAM
According to the Art Gallery of NSW:
‘William Piguenit was one of the earliest professional painters born in Australia. Having began work in the Tasmanian Lands and Survey Department as a draughtsman and mapmaker, he left after a decade, in 1872, and took up landscape painting full time and full on, making pioneering and exacting walks to remote and spectacular regions in the wilds of Tasmania, including Lake St Clair where he sketched and photographed.
Mainly self-taught, his Tasmanian landscapes draw inspiration from European romanticism — with an emphasis on motifs of heavy grandeur. He portrayed nature’s infinite mystery within a topographical essence.
the work of near contemporary émigré Australian artists Eugene von Guérard and Nicholas Chevalier were both influential and influencing.
He exhibited photographs and paintings of wilderness scenes throughout the 1870s.
In 2022 the art critic Christopher Allen took a fresh look at a ‘late expression of the sublime spirit of romanticism’ in Piguenit’s A mountain-top, Tasmania. He judged it ‘one of Piguenit’s most impressive canvasses.’