Slumbering Sea Mentone
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The famous 1887 painting, Slumbering Sea, Mentone, by Tom Roberts,now on permanent display in the National Gallery of Victoria. To see how the Heidelberg School artist, Tom
Roberts, has captured the feeling of this
place, see Google’s zoomable high resolution version. That is part of the Google Cultural
Institute, which is an online display of
the greatest paintings in the major art
galleries of the world. The painting above
is best viewed at that high resolution
hyperlink as it is one of a number that
Google Inc. displays at its gigapixel
level of resolution, which allows viewers
to zoom into individual brush strokes, as
the Institute’s excellent commentary
explains. The painting was privately owned
until the 1980s, when the National Gallery
of Victoria bought it. The State of Victoria owns both this
masterpiece and, more importantly, the
splendid landscape it depicts, but there
is imminent danger of that landscape –
which is of international cultural and
scientific interest – being grossly marred
and set on the path of ongoing
despoilation by Beaumaris Motor Yacht
Squadron’s proposed power boat storage
against the cliff and on much of the sea.
The constantly eroding, unstable white clay cliffs in the distance, with the Dandenong Ranges seen above them, were sloped back in the 1930s and vegetated, and a basalt block sea wall was built in front of them.
The Victorian Government, in the 1960s, let the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron fill the adjacent waters of Port Phillip Bay, and the public foreshore here with over a hectare of rubble waste – despite its long status as a Permanent Public Recreation Reserve, and to carve a road down the cliff – to form its private clubhouse and grounds. BMYS Ltd now has a 21-year lease of the filled area.
The filled area is an enclave in the Beaumaris Bay Fossil Site (Identifier 18053 on the Register of the National Estate) and was partly excised from Beach Park (a Permanent Public Recreation Reserve since 1906) by a retrograde 1994 Act of Victoria’s Parliament. It is at the foot of Ray Street, BEAUMARIS. |
