Preview: Australian Impressionists at National Gallery London

EACH TIME I VISIT LONDON, ONE of my first calls is to Trafalgar Square and The National Gallery. This must be my favourite gallery anywhere – the temple of my soul! Walking through the galleries filled with the centuries of paintings that I would acknowledge with a nod, talk to with admiration and at times with love, I came to a smaller gallery in the centre of the building, the Sunley Room. Here is the Australia’s Impressionists exhibition.

These much-loved paintings at home, icons of Australian art, seem to have shrunk in the presence of their forebears. They seemed light years away from the 400 years of painting that I had walked past. And “light” is the operative word.

Tom Roberts’ ‘Trafalgar Square’