Swiss landscape painter and portrait photographer, settled in Melbourne in 1864, admired by the artists from the Heidelberg area such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton who bestowed him with the accolade of 'Father of Australian painting’. In the 1870s, his work increasingly drew elements from Australian landscape such as the bush land in works like Lilydale (1878) and Bush Track.
He was born on 3 March 1814 at Morges, in the Vaud, Switzerland, second son of François-Simeon Buvelot, a civil servant, and Jean-Louis Marguerite, née Heizer, a schoolteacher. His family were descended from French Protestant refugees. Although his full name was bq). Abram Louis Buvelotbq)., he never used his first name, and aways signed his name as 'Louis Buvelot’. The family was inclined to art; his brother, Eugene-Jean-Louis-Henri Buvelot, became a printer and lithographer. After attending art school at Lausanne he travelled to Paris in about 1834 and studied briefly with Camille Flers before travelling to Brazil, where his uncle had a coffee plantation.
By October 1840 he was established as an artist in Rio de Janeiro, where he exhibited paintings, lithographs and undertook commissions for photography. He was awarded a gold medal by the Rio Academy of Fine Arts in 1842 and was patronised by the Emperor Dom Pedro II. While living in Rio he married the French born Marie-Félicité Lalouette.
In 1852 the family returned to Switzerland, where he worked chiefly as a photographer. He travelled alone to Calcutta in 1854, before returning to his family in Switzerland, where he became drawing master at an experimental industrial school at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel. He had modest success as an artist in this period, being awarded a silver medal at the 1856 Berne Exhibition.
In 1864, after the death of his first wife, he sailed to Australia from Liverpool, accompanied by Caroline-Julie Beguin, a fellow teacher from Neuchâtel. They arrived in Melbourne in February 1865 and bought a photography studio in Bourke Street. By the following year they were living at 88 La Trobe Street East, where Buvelot established a studio, while Caroline-Julie gave French lessons. That year he began exhibiting his paintings. In 1873 they moved to George Street Fitzroy. The distinctive quality of his painterly landscapes meant that his talent was soon recognised by James Smith, the influential art critic of The Argus. Two paintings, Winter Morning Near Heidelberg and Summer Afternoon, Templestowe, were among the first Australian paintings purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria.
From 1869 he taught at the Carlton School of Design where he became a most influential teacher to the next generation of artists including Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. He encouraged his students to paint en plein air; although his own work was completed in the studio. His subjects were landscapes of the region surrounding Melbourne: Heidelberg, Templestowe, Dromana, Lilydale and Mount Macedon. He had hoped to be appointed to lead the National Gallery School, but was passed over in favour of Eugene von Guérard.
By 1884 failing eyesight and crippled hands meant that he ceased painting. After his death on 30 May 1888 a monument was erected at Kew Cemetery and in 1894 one of the galleries at the National Gallery of Victoria was renamed in his honour. Buvelot also has the distinction of being the subject of the first memorial retrospective exhibition for an Australian artist. This was mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria in July 1888 by George Folingsby and James Smith.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
