The Yarra at Kew is an oil painting on board, made in 1946 by Australian artist John Brack whose insights into Australian life during times of great political, cultural and social upheaval all contribute to an oeuvre exploring the Australian psyche.

Much more than just a painter, his artistic practice was diverse yet extremely focused and at the time of his death in 1999, John Brack was recognised as one of Australia’s major artists of the twentieth century.

The Yarra at Kew is 46.5 cms high by 57.5 cms wide and is an extremely rare and early work by the artist produced whilst he was still a student and explores a fascination with the landscapes that people traverse, and his personal relationship to the City of Boroondara, having been a long term resident, where his widow, artist Helen Maudsley, still lives.

The Yarra at Kew depicts the bend in the Yarra Boulevarde at Kew, approximately 250 metres north of the Studley Park turn-off, and the houses lining either Milfay or Stalwell Streets up the hills beyond. 

This painting exhibits the technical hallmarks and elements of the recognisable ‘Brack style’ that pervades his later paintings, such as muted colours that have been carefully selected and limited, and a linear structure akin to pictorial architecture.

The Yarra at Kew is strikingly topographical in detail, the landscape captured from a high distant viewpoint that looks down to the river, with hills and houses in surround elevated. 

The lavender grey Yarra widest at the base of the painting, almost central, curves up and around to the left tapering away at the painting’s edge. Within that lower quarter, framed within the bend, is a dense bushland of trees painted in muted greens- olive, moss, fern and sage.

Along the bending river’s right, a band of exposed escarpment, its strata sunlit and apricot beige ascends with visible brushstrokes conveying the sandstone’s grainy sediment.

And beyond, increasing in elevation, in the upper right area of the painting, tan and fawn double storey houses with cinnamon coloured gables line the slopes and a single grey street which winds away, disappears up into the tree enveloped suburbia, a hilly horizon, beneath a baby blue sky with a single white cumulus cloud floating by. 

Signed and dated along bottom right hand side of the canvas is J. Brack 46.

The Audio Description of The Yarra at Kew includes extracts from Sascha Grischin’s book called The Art of John Brack published by Oxford University Press, Melbourne, and has been written, voiced and produced by Nilgun Guven from Vitae Veritas 2023 for Boroondara Arts for their exhibition ‘Our Place: Celebrating 20 Years of the Town Hall Gallery.’ This work is part of the Town Hall Gallery Collection.