A Queensland artist has won this year's $35,000 Glover Prize for landscape painting in Tasmania.

Ian Waldron of Cairns was picked from 43 finalists for his painting on a piece of Tasmanian Oak, called Cockle Creek.

Australia's richest landscape art prize attracted a record 272 entries and the finalists' exhibition opened on 5th March at the historic town of Evandale in northern Tasmania.

One of the Glover judges, Imants Tillers, says Mr Waldron is also the first Indigenous Australian to win the award.

"This work has some historical depth and goes back to early colonial contacts between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans," Mr Tillers said.

"It depicts a positive encounter between the French explorers and the Aboriginal tribes at Cockle Creek."