The prestigious Glover Prize has opened entries for 2024

The John Glover Society Inc. is inviting artists from across the country to submit their works for the annual, $75,000 award, with entries open until Friday, January 26.

The Evandale-based award borrows its name from one of Australia's most celebrated colonial painters, John Glover, a 19th century artist with the legacy as the "Father of Australian landscape painting" who spent the last years of his life painting Tasmania's wilderness and Aboriginal people.

The Glover Prize is awarded yearly for the best contemporary landscape painting of a Tasmanian scene completed in the previous 12 months.

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Glover Prize curator Megan Dick said this year's competition was continuing its "grass roots" legacy born from John Glover.

"The point of difference with the Glover Prize is it comes from an authentic base," Ms Dick said.

"A base of Glover's work which was really the genesis of Australian landscape painting."

An already mature, established British artist, Glover arrived in Tasmania at age 64; an adventurous and brave move for a senior Englishman who was "searching for a new subject matter".

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This year is the competition's 21st anniversary of stimulating "conversations about the meaning and possibilities expressed in the words landscape, painting and Tasmania" through its prize.

Ms Dick said the submission requirements of a landscape painting of Tasmania are quite interpretive.

"What a landscape can be defined as is quite broad," she said.

"It doesn't need to be native trees - we encourage introspective pieces of mindscapes, seascapes and others."

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Hobart-based artist Joanna Chew interpreted the landscape differently with her entry Tender, an oil on linen piece addressing the contemporary rental crisis, which was last year's winner.

The winner of the prestigious landscape prize - which began in 2004 - receives $75,000 and a bronze maquette of the colonial artist.

In previous years the competition offered a $50,000 prize until the society increased the pool in 2023 to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Finalists for the prize will be announced online in early February of 2024, with the winner crowned on Friday, March 8.

An exhibition of the 42 finalists' paintings is held annually at Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale, with the 2024 gallery to be open in mid-March.

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