Australia's Lost Impressionist: John Russell

Australia's Lost Impressionist – John Russell tells the fascinating story behind the only Australian artist at the centre of the Impressionist movement in France and how his famous friendships forever changed the way the world sees colour. A close friend of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse, John Peter Russell was himself a great vanguard painter, as well as a magnetic personality and long-term inhabitant of Belle Île, a gorgeously wild, picturesque island that has had an outsize impact on the development of modern art, from Monet and Matisse through to Ellsworth Kelly. Russell is one of the most interesting figures in Australian art, and a crucial figure in the story of Impressionism and post-Impressionist art in general.

– Sebastian Smee, Australian-born art writer and critic.

John Russell was handsome, wealthy, debonair and being Australian, quite exotic in nineteenth-century France. Yet despite his own artistic accomplishments and his pivotal role in the development of modern art, his name and his art have been largely unrecognised outside rarefied art circles. This documentary explores his enormous legacy on twentieth-century art through his paintings and his friendships. It also provides a vivid picture of what it was like to be an Australian expatriate living and working in Europe in the 1880s.

Running time: 58 minutes

ATOM has also produced a study guide for Australia's Lost Impressionist: John Russell. This study guide is available to download here.