A View of Dovedale c. 1825

This is John Glover’s watercolour, “A View of Dovedale”. Glover was a British artist who, like many, emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania, in the early 19th century. This painting is a romantic depiction of the English countryside, with its rolling hills and quaint bridge. But landscapes are never just landscapes. As settlers moved across the globe, they brought with them certain ideas about land ownership, property, and civilization itself. For Glover, these ideas were deeply embedded in the colonial project. The sublime beauty of untouched nature was not just a matter of aesthetics, but was tied to the displacement of indigenous populations. Artists like Glover painted these landscapes as a way of asserting dominion over them, erasing the presence and history of the people who had lived on that land for millennia. This painting is beautiful, but it’s also a reminder of the complex relationship between art, identity, and power.