William Piguenit
Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in Australia. Various measurements of the peak originally called Kosciuszko showed it to be slightly lower than its neighbor, Mount Townsend. Therefore, the names of the mountains were swapped by the New South Wales Lands Department in 1892 so that Mount Kosciuszko remains the name of the highest peak of Australia, and Mount Townsend ranks as second. As a result, there is an 1863 painting by Eugene von Guerard hanging in the National Gallery of Australia titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko," but which is actually the view from Mount Townsend. Just as oddly, the mountain is named for Polish national hero, General Tadeusz Kościuszko, because of its perceived resemblance to the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków.
Piguenit was born in Hobart, Tasmania, and his first artistic influences came from his mother, who set up a school for young ladies where she taught "French, music and drawing." He took painting lessons from the Scottish painter Frank Dunnett but until he got a good price for a painting from Sir James Agnew, he had little success as a painter. Piguenit left his day job in 1873 to devote his time more fully to painting and his oils and watercolors of Tasmanian landscapes soon brought favorable reviews. He was a participant in the venture to the western part of Tasmania - as found in the book Walk to the West. After moving to New South Wales in 1880, Piguenit's subjects included the Darling, Nepean and Hawkesbury Rivers as well as the Lane Cove River close to his Hunters Hill home. It was also at this time that he became one of the founders of the Art Society of New South Wales. Later, during a visit to Tasmania he was noticed by the governor's wife, Lady Hamilton and a large number of his drawings were purchased by the government for the Hobart gallery.
His Flood in the Darling was purchased for the National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1895. In 1898 and 1900 he visited Europe, exhibiting at London and Paris. Returning to Australia he won the Wynne Prize in 1901 with his Thunder storm on the Darling. In 1903 he was commissioned by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales trustees to paint Mount Kosciusko, which we see here. By the end of the century, Piguenit was regarded as the leading Australian-born landscape painter.
Clinton