A hotel built on a former jam factory cleverly combines four of our favourite pastimes: art, food, sleep and travel.
A hotel in a former jam factory cleverly combines four of our favourite pastimes: art, food, sleep and travel. And now the Henry Jones Art Hotel, situated on Hobart's often sparkling, sometimes moody waterfront, has launched 20 Years of Glover, a celebration of the country's richest landscape prize.
The hotel - which was Australia's first dedicated art hotel when it opened nearly 20 years ago - already features around 500 unique pieces of Tasmanian art, including several pieces from John Glover himself, that guests can spend hours perusing. But this new exhibition is the first time each winning piece of the prestigious Glover Prize - open to paintings of Tasmanian landscapes - has been under the same roof. The prize celebrates the legacy of the revered British-born colonial landscape artist, who moved to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1831 at age 64.
When booking any room until June, hotel guests have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the exhibition, with entry to the art tour and a $100 food and drinks credit to use at any of the hotel's three restaurants included.
Guests can also learn about the hotel's plentiful past life and the history of surrounding buildings on Hunter Street through the informative Sticky Stones and Secrets guided tour.
To experience the true historical glory of the hotel, we stayed a couple of nights in the Peacock Terrace, extravagantly split over two levels with two bedrooms, a sitting room, two bathrooms, as well as a luxuriant Kohler spa situated in the main bedroom. The terrace was built in 1823 and formed part of the home of the IXL jam factory's founders George and Margaret Peacock, then was later occupied by Sir Henry Jones when he took ownership of the factory.
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Even the food is an art lover's heaven, with breakfast moved to the hotel's lounge, home to several Glover Prize-winning works (of Tasmanian landscapes, of course). For dinner, the popular Landscape Bar and Grill's set menu features dishes influenced by different parts of Tasmania's diverse landscape. Think grilled oyster, wallaby and beef tartare canapes, wood-fired octopus with a smoked wagyu dressing for an entree, grass-fed lamb with Paris mash for a main, and Huon Valley apple pie and Lark Whisky trifle for dessert.
The restaurant's walls showcase a collection of Glover works, which display the artist's prowess in capturing and playing with light, as well as a range of previous Glover Prize winners, with diverse interpretations of the concept of a landscape.
The hotel's IXL Long Bar mixologists have created the J.G. Collins specialty cocktail exclusively for the exhibition: Tasmanian Forty Spotted Classic Gin infused with pepperberry and native river mint and wattleseed syrups, lemon juice, a dash of soda and Australian bitters. It's a sweet, earthy and refreshing drink, beautifully layered as if to pay homage to the rolling landscapes realistically and mythologically captured by Glover in his work.
Still thirsty? Next door, MACq 01 hotel's the Story Bar has (until June) a sparkling flight of four vintages from the award-winning House of Arras, paired with culinary bites. The $95 flight includes two glasses of sparkling wine aged for seven years, the Grand Rose and the Grand Vintage.
SNAPSHOT
Where: Henry Jones Art Hotel, 25 Hunter Street, Hobart
How much: Rooms $300 to $1000 a night
Explore more: thehenryjones.com
Matt Maloney was a guest of the Henry Jones Art Hotel.
Political reporter for Australian Community Media, based in Hobart.
Political reporter for Australian Community Media, based in Hobart.
