Living in Gloucester, the Bucketts are the first and last landmark we see every day.
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Ever wonder how many generations before us marvelled at the same striking silhouette?
More than 125 years ago, a young Arthur Streeton, one of Australia's greatest landscape painters, explored the Manning district on horseback and was so captivated by the Bucketts, he immortalised them in two large paintings.
Staying at the Gloucester Hotel in 1893, he waxed poetic in a letter to a friend about the 'distant range like a huge dragon asleep in pale blue'.
Of the two renditions of the mountain, one was eventually painted over to become a still-life of lilies.
The larger canvas, unusually inscribed 'Australia', Streeton sent to Paris for submission to an art salon, but it arrived too late.
Acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) in 1918, Streeton's The Gloucester Buckets (also known as Landscape - the AA Companys million acres) was damaged in the 1940s and languished in the vaults for decades.
The gallery's painting conservator, Simon Ives painstakingly cleaned it for this year's major retrospective on Streeton to reveal its original beauty and power.
AGNSW's chief curator of Australian art and exhibition curator, Wayne Tunnicliffe considers this artwork one of Streeton's "four big landscapes" of the 1890s.
He refers to it as an "elegiac, timeless" piece with a "poetic, nostalgic feel" that captures the "moment of seeing what is in front of him but almost a moment of loss as well."
"An exceptionally fine testimony of Streeton's engagement with the Gloucester landscape," he said.
Why not come see for yourself, with the painting currently on display in the landmark Streeton exhibition at the AGNSW, Art Gallery Road, Sydney until February 14, 2021.
The gallery is open Monday to Sunday from 10am until 5pm.
For ticket prices, visit www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/streeton/
The painting also featured in the richly illustrated, accompanying book available from the gallery shop and will be on permanent exhibit afterwards in the hall on 19th-century Australian art.
