John Glover is Australia's most distinguished early colonial artist and the only nineteenth-century painter to have had a successful career in Europe before migrating. He arrived from Britain to convict Tasmania in 1831 aged 64. Why did he, in old age, come to Australia and paint his most brilliant landscapes here?

Ron Radford addresses these questions and examines Glover's painting and farming at his Patterdale estate in northern Tasmania. He also records the recent saving of Glover's 200-year-old Patterdale farmhouse and the re-creation of his studio and garden.

Dr Radford stresses that Glover created Australia's first great landscape canvases, many poignantly depicting the original Palawa inhabitants.