When landscape artist John Glover painted the scenic hills of the Nile in 1831, he might not have expected it to look the same nearly 200 years later.
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But the new owner of Glover’s Patterdale property Carol Westmore says that is still the case.
"The landscape and skyline is exactly the same [in the painting] as it is now,” Mrs Westmore said.
Today, 4000 hectares of land around the Nile and Dedington are heritage protected because of Mrs Westmore’s hard work.
“The whole of that landscape is now protected and it will remain the way Glover saw it,” she said.
The heritage listing also includes Glover’s neighbour, Robert Pitcairn’s, property.
The area has now been coined, ‘Glover Country’.
“Glover Country isn’t actually a name title, it’s just a description of the land in those places,” Mrs Westmore said. “Tom Roberts first coined that term because he was very much a fan of Glover, even though it came a century later. He loved Glover and he just coined it Glover country.”
Glover is buried on the site, and Mrs Westmore said she had noticed an increase in people wanting to visit the site.
“There is more and more interest in people coming to see where Glover lived. People can go there and visit his grave. We do have individuals coming to look,” Mrs Westmore said.
"I think it’s a growing interest in Glover and the significance is him in the history of landscape painting.”
Mrs Westmore has been working for about two years to restore Glover’s Patterdale residence back to its former glory.
“We'll definitely be finished in six months and then we hope to restore the garden. It won’t be exactly like what it looked lie when Glover painted it..,” she said.
“I will have the house available for accommodation and hope to create a residency program and we will have some maybe Glover-esk events in the exhibition room.”
Glover Society secretary Irina Petrovsky said the organisation were thankful Mrs Westmore had been able to take over the property.
“We’re absolutely thrilled that someone has had the vision and the foresight to follow through with the dream of restoring Glover’s house,” Ms Petrovsky said.
She said Glover had paved the way for future landscape artists and his importance could not be estimated.
"From him, all the artists that went on forward actually used him as a vision that they could work from,” she said.
"All the skies are really, really blue in proportion. You don’t get that, he is the first artists that has actually created that. The reals are very, very real. He is the first artist to actually create something that looks like the landscape.”