‘Parker’s River waterfall, Cape Otway, Victoria’ 1865

Russian-born Nicholas Chevalier was one of the first artists in Australia to explore the possibilities of printing in colour. In 1865 ‘N. Chevalier’s Album of Chromo Lithographs’ was published in Melbourne, reproducing in vivid colour twelve of his oil paintings of Victorian landscapes.
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Parker’s River waterfall, Cape Otway, Victoria presents his 1862 painting Waterfall on the Parker’s River (now in the Art Gallery of Ballarat), a location that he had visited and sketched in April of that year. In December 1862 the painting was included in the Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts, where it received considerable praise and evoked poetic responses. While the chromolithograph closely follows the painted landscape, the two herons in the painting have been replaced here by brightly dressed fishermen.
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Nicholas Chevalier 1828—1902

Parker’s River waterfall, Cape Otway, Victoria 1865
from ‘N Chevalier’s Album of Chromo Lithographs’, published by Charles Troedel, Melbourne 1865
chromolithograph
The University of Melbourne Art Collection. Gift of the Russell and Mab Grimwade Bequest 1973
1973.0644