Charles Conder Hardcover - 2005

From the publisher

Toulouse-Lautrec made an oil study of Conder in evening dress and gave it to him. Thinly but exquisitely painted on cardboard, he has captured the essence of Conder's attraction: the hooded, sleepy eyes, the pose at once assertive but relaxed and the suggestion, in the full lips and introverted green eyes, of sensual pleasures anticipated and recalled. Lautrec has immortalised him as l'homme sensuel. Charles Conder was one of the youngest, most original and most talented members of the Heidelberg School of impressionist painters - and one of the few to achieve a lasting reputation outside Australia. In London his works hang in the Tate and National Portrait galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Conder studied in Sydney and joined Julian Ashton's circle. At Bondi and Coogee he painted with Tom Roberts, who invited him to Melbourne. There he joined the artists' camps at Mentone and Box Hill, became a student of Frederick McCubbin and was a major contributor to the famous 9 X 5 Exhibition in 1889. As in Sydney, his carefree charm and delicate, witty paintings endeared him to literary and artistic circles. Paris beckoned early, and he soon fell in with the fin de siecle generat