importance to members of the group and in this painting, Pugh has performed a particularly antipodean inversion by featuring an ancient European story placed squarely within an unmistakably Australian landscape.

‘Nature, red tooth and claw’ is how the artist-critic James Gleeson memorably described Pugh’s paintings,2 and Pugh was the first to admit that his ‘skeletal’ imagery was informed by his psychological struggle to come to terms with the savage battles he experienced in New Guinea during World War Two. Felled by malaria and blackwater fever, Pugh turned to art during his convalescence discovering ‘the power of art as … a cathartic portrayal and surmounting of those elemental powers of life and death that he had experienced in such overwhelming confusion during the war.’3 In 1951 he moved to thescrubby natural haven of Cottles Bridge, on the fringes of Melbourne’s north and built a rambling mud-brick house named ‘Dunmoochin.’ Pugh revelled in his new home recognising that ‘Australia isn’t soft, like Europe. It’s hard, dry, yet with a wonderfully delicate balance.’4

In the Greek myth, Europa was the daughter of the King of Phoenicia. Unfortunately, the supreme god Zeus became enamored with her. Taking the form of a bull, his ‘gentle yet majestic’ attitude attracted Europa, and Zeus ‘very gallantly knelt before her’ before suddenly rearing to his feet and abducting her.5 In Europa and the Bull, Pugh chose to depict the very moment of deception. Europa stretches her whole body in supplication as the animal – massive, rounded and boulder-like – consumes the space around her. Pugh’s