Montmorency

Montmorency is one of a chain of open space suburbs in a green belt on the north-eastern fringes of the greater Melbourne metropolitan area. It is an area made famous in hundreds of paintings completed by two distinct generations of artists - the Heidelberg School of Arthur Streeton, Fred McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Charles Conder and company and the painting team assembled at the remarkable Montsalvat Arts Complex by Justus Jorgensen. A Banyule Council brochure guides you round the sites of the scenes captured on canvas by the Heidelberg painters in the 1880s. From the day the visionary Jorgensen founded his artistic colony in 1934, the Montsalvat Complex, in the neighbouring suburb of Eltham has maintained a reputation for supporting artists and writers prepared to push the envelopment of convention. Robert Close, writer in residence in the early 1940s, was gaoled for obscenity after the publication of his novel, Love Me Sailor, in 1945. The Montsalvat complex, which is open daily to the public, still hosts working artists, permanent and current exhibitions and poetry and music festivals.