Golden Summer, Eaglemont is an 1889 landscape painting by Australian artist Arthur Streeton. Painted en plein air at the height of a summer drought, it is an idyllic depiction of sunlit, undulating plains that stretch from Streeton's Eaglemont "artists' camp" to the distant blue Dandenong Ranges, outside Melbourne. Naturalistic yet poetic, and a conscious effort by the 21-year-old Streeton to create his grandest work yet, it is a prime example of the artist's distinctive, high-keyed blue and gold palette, what he considered "nature's scheme of colour in Australia". The National Gallery of Australia acquired the painting in 1995 for $3.5 million, then a record price for an Australian painting. It remains one of Streeton's most famous works and is considered a masterpiece of Australian Impressionism. Background Streeton painted the work en plein air in January 1889 at his Eaglemont "artists' camp", located in the then-rural suburb of Heidelberg on Melbourne's outskirts. He passed through the area in late 1888 in search of the site depicted in one of his favourite paintings, Louis Buvelot's Summer Afternoon, Templestowe (1866). On his return journey, he met Charles Davis—brother-in-law of painter and friend David Davies—who granted him "artistic possession" of an old weatherboard homestead atop Mount Eagle. Streeton occupied the homestead over the next eighteen months; fellow plein airists Charles Conder and Tom Roberts joined him for extended periods, and less frequently other artists, notably Walter Withers. Streeton described the location in a letter to Roberts, calling it "our hill of gold": The title may have been inspired by young plein airist Leon Pole, one of the earliest members of the camp. In a letter to Roberts, Conder wrote affectionately of Pole, but said that he "sometimes drinks a little too much 'Golden Summer', as he calls wine". Years later, Streeton recalled painting Golden Summer as he, Conder, and plein airist John Ford Paterson shared cheese and a bottle of claret. John Sandes, a journalist who often visited the Eaglemont camp, wrote in 1927: The painting is noted for its thick application of paint, and one evening in the Eaglemont homestead, Streeton approached the canvas with a knife in order to scrape away some of the layers. Roberts convinced him to "leave it alone", for which Streeton was later thankful. Exhibition and reception Table Talk reported in May 1889 that Golden Summer, Eaglemont "abundantly testifies to [Streeton's] perfect sense of colour ... He paints