Tuesday, 29 July
6.50pm

The National Library of Australia is the country's largest reference library with over nine million items in its collection, including a surprising number of art works. Yet visitors to the library glimpse only a fraction of the collection with many fragile items unable to be placed on permanent display.

Former director of the National Gallery of Australia, Betty Churcher, presents an insider's guide to some of the library's art treasures, which are rarely on public display. From her unique vantage point, Churcher makes intriguing historical connections between paintings and engravings, photography, manuscripts and artefacts, illustrated journals and diaries.

These are fascinating tales about the creative process and the works themselves that offer a tantalising insight into Australia's culture and heritage.

Episode 9: Figure in the Landscape

John Glover revolutionised his art and became one of Australia's finest landscape artists after arriving in Tasmania at the age of 64 in 1831. A good English landscape painter, Glover became an outstanding Australian landscape painter when he turned his eye to an unfamiliar environment to produce the best works of his career. Glover's private sketchbooks show he was appalled by the atrocities he saw committed against the Aboriginal people and was eager to portray them in the idyllic world he imagined they had once enjoyed. What he saw transformed him from a landscape painter, into a 'figure in the landscape painter' - a considerable departure for a man in late career.