Within a year of returning to Australia, he set up his own studio, won the Wynne Prize, and married Selma (Sallie) Bartels. A four-year scholarship in Europe followed, initiating a period of profound artistic growth. In 1893, he enrolled in James AshtonвЂ™s Norwood Art School, where he was identified as an unusually talented pupil. In 1892, aged fourteen, Hans left school and was apprenticed to a sawmilling and hardware business near Adelaide, buying art materials with his wages and drawing in his spare time. вЂA great love for Nature вЂ“ who will ever unfold all her secrets in any one of our livesвЂ™.Д«orn in Hamburg, Germany in 1877 to Maria and Louis Heysen, Hans Heysen and his family moved to Australia in 1884. In 1936, Hans wrote to his daughter of what he perceived as the key to a fulfilling life and a source of sustenance in difficult times:

Their shared reverence for the natural world, manifested in HansвЂ™s evocative landscapes and NoraвЂ™s vibrant flower paintings, strengthened their bond. Hans and NoraвЂ™s lifelong written correspondence offers rare insight into a mutually loving and supportive relationship, as well as into their working methods, inspirations and thoughts on the key artistic debates of their time.

While Hans devoted his mature practice predominantly to the depiction of landscape, Nora became renowned as a portraitist and painter of still life. Both artists travelled in Europe and their work demonstrates both international influences and engagement with their Australian contemporaries. In many ways, theirs is an archetypal twentieth-century Australian story of migration, family life, wartime separation and a deep connection to place. Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art brings together the work of Hans and Nora Heysen, father and daughter artists whose work spanned more than a century during which Australia and the world underwent numerous social, political and artistic transformations.

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