Australian Galleries 2



Spring Frost by Elioth Gruner

According to visitor feedback, this is the ‘most-loved Australian landscape painting’ in the gallery. Elioth Gruner painted it in 1919 en plein air at Emu Plains. The cattle breath and morning shadows reaching out to the viewer, hark back to a rural nostalgia which was rapidly disappearing. The vigorous foreground brushwork and the sense of light and tone create a wistful world worth fighting for.

I also like his later work, which is more severe in form and outline. By emphasising the subtle harmonies of tone and colour, he creates a feeling of stability and permanence in contrast to his former exploratons into the evanescence of light. These organised pictures are more scientific and less emotional, but the landscape is familiar to me, with the sweep of hills to the valley river corridor, being the view from the back of our house.


On the Murrumbidgee (1929) - Elioth Gruner

I love Nora Heysen's work from her still lifes to her war paintings and her self-portraits. Nora Heysen’s self-portrait strongly articulates her identity and ambition as a young artist, independent of her famous artist-father Hans Heysen. Characteristic of her 1930s’ paintings, Self portrait is powerfully composed with precise, strongly defined forms and earthy colours recalling European masters of the early Renaissance. After undertaking study in Europe, Heysen established herself as a distinguished portrait and still-life painter. In 1938 she won the Archibald Prize, the first woman to have done so." - from the Art Gallery of New South Wales' website.

This particular portrait was painted in her father's studio (which we have visited), with the Vermeer prints on the walls. Nora wrote, "I greatly admired Vermeer’s works and wanted to paint like him – perhaps Vermeer and my father were my biggest influences in those days …"


Self Portrait (1932) - Nora Heysen

Margaret Preston is another favourite, and the development of her art and style is quite fascinating. Her still lifes are spectacular, including Summer and Still life with daisies and teapot, both painted in 1915. On 25 April 1915 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, an action that came to signify Australia's emrging nationalism. At the time Preston (nee McPherson) was in England, whence she had moved from Paris after the outbreak of war. Despite the horror and trauma she encountered - she taught pottery and basket-weaving to shell-shocked soldiers - she continued to paint pleasant and cheerful still lifes.


Summer (1915) - Margaret Preston

In Still life wth teapot and daisies, the flat white sands of Bunmahon places the table firmly outside as its pink striped cloth manipulates the viewer's eye around and back to the central construction of bowls, flowers and teacups so diminishing an artificial perspective that would be created if the stripes travelled into depth.

"Her engaging play with reflections, a device she returned to throguhout her long painting career, shows another landscape mirrored in the teapot. A hammock of pink cradles a solitary figure in a long dress holding a parasol ad standing in a green field with a blue sky, so introducing a human element to the painting's design. The figure could be the viewer or a partaker returning to the afternoon tea."


Still life with daisies and teapot (1915) - Margaret Preston

The difference between Flowers and Australian gum blossom shows the dvelopment and future direction of Preston's work. Although she still painted flowers, she chose to embrace local flora and a less formal approach with confidence.

Flowers (1922) - Margaret Preston



Australian gum blossom (1928) - Margaret Preston

In between, she also ventured into stylised groupings, such as in Thea Proctor's Tea Party. This painting belongs to the genre of still life, but it is also a kind of portrait. It is a symbolic rendering of the things that Thea Proctor stood for. Preston encapsulates her fellow artist's belief in the importance of surrounding one's self with objects of taste and beauty, and alludes to her enthusiasm for arranged flowers in domestic settings, something the two artists shared.


The Proctor's tea party (1924) - Margaret Preston

Meanwhile, Implement blue is one of Margaret Preston’s most innovative works, embodying the values of progressive, modern living. She felt that this was a mechanical age – highly civilised and unaesthetic. Impersonal inventions were introduced to make home-life easier, but she felt detached from domesticity.

The restricted palette and strict analysis of form in this painting reveal how she turns to the genre of still life to express her conceptual conflict. The domestic vessels have been renamed 'implements' and reduced to essential forms.


Implement Blue (1927) - Margaret Preston

One of her most famous works is her 1930 Self Portrait, painted as a commission at the request of the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She later said, 'my self-porrait is completed, but I am a flower painter - I am not a flower." And yet, she has painted this image with the same attention to detail she brought to her still-lifes, incorporating the essentials of her art: her brush and palette and a pot of wildflowers.


Self Portrait (1930) - Margaret Preston

 Grace Cossington Smith’s The sock knitter has been acclaimed as the first post-impressionist painting to be exhibited in Australia. The extreme flattening of the picture plane and the use of bright, expressive, broken colour applied in broad brush-strokes to delineate form reflects the aesthetic concerns of European painters such as Cézanne, Matisse and van Gogh.

The subject of the painting is Madge, the artist’s sister, knitting socks for soldiers serving on the frontline in World War I. Distinctly modern in its outlook, The sock knitter counterpoints the usual narratives of masculine heroism in wartime by focusing instead on the quiet steady efforts of the woman at home.



The sock knitter (1915) - Grace Cossington-Smith

 In 1920 Cossington Smith was in the city when she noticed a crowd gathering. As she recalled: ‘I didn’t expect him to be there. I was in Martin Place and wondering why all the people were gathering, and someone said, “The Prince of Wales is going to drive by”. I was very excited and stood on the pavement and got an impression of it … then I think I made drawings of the buildings – a drawing rather – just to get it right. But I couldn’t while he was going by because it was only a few seconds, so I had to impress it on my mind’.


The Prince (1920) - Grace Cossington-Smith

I also love the painting of Reinforcements, troops marching for the use of the lines and colour which create an upright sense of movement - you can almost hear the boots hitting the ground in unison. The women in their hats waving handkerchiefs to the men and turning their backs on the brawling brat on the ground also speaks volumes to me. There are moments when individual wants are less important than communal needs.

Reinforcements, troops marching (1917) - Grace Cossington-Smith

Inspired by the art deco designs and vivid colours of the David Jones department store cafe in Sydney,  The Lacquer Room embodies the modern inter-war urban experience. The rich red and scattered patterns of the chairs are contrasted with the gleaming green of the lacquered tables, set against the brightness of the walls and polished floors. Grace Cossington Smith’s bold approach to colour exudes a sense of celebrating the new, similar to the contemporary consumer culture epitomised by the department store.

In an interview, she said, "It was quite a surprise, I didn't know it was there, but I went down to get cup of tea … and found this lovely restaurant … I was struck by its colour and general design the moment I saw it … Scarlet, green and white held me spellbound..."
 

The Lacquer Room (1935-36) - Grace Cossington-Smith

Ethel Carrick painted vivacious impressionist-influenced European landscapes, market scenes and flower pieces. After studying in London early in the 20th century, Carrick settled in Paris in 1905 where she became actively involved with women’s painting societies. She travelled extensively with her artist-husband, E Phillips Fox, in France, Italy, Northern Africa and Spain.
After Fox’s death in 1915, Carrick lived mostly abroad, travelling in Europe, painting in Majorca, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and India, and in the 1930s living in Kashmir. Her paintings commonly displayed an interest in figures, objects and her surrounding environment, rendered as patterns of colour and light.

Flower Market, Nice (1926) - Ethel Carrick

Art Gallery of South Australia: Part Three

Moving perhaps to more familiar artistic territory for me, here are some more of the artworks I enjoyed.

The Letter (1889) by Emma Minnie Boyd

This is a fine example of the later nineteenth century Victorian narrative style of painting which told stories and pointed morals. It hints at the young woman's possible future as she looks away wistfully, the letter tucked behind her back and the opened envelope lying at her feet, pointing to a world beyond the threshold of the drawing room.

I also like the treatment of light in this painting as the interior is dark and precise highlighting the peacock floor feature and Persian style carpets indicative of the popular aesthetic movement, while the sunlight filtering through the curtains and the impressionist style brushwork of the outdoors world provide a pleasing contrast.
 

Peacock Panel (1899) by Albert Pedvin

And speaking of peacocks and aesthetics, this glorious beast shines brightly against the walls. It's watercolour, pencil and gold leaf on wood, and is quite a remarkable feature in the gallery.

The Four Seasons (1902) by Hugh Ramsay

Detail from The Four Seasons

This is Hugh Ramsay’s only known multiple panel work. It was originally placed in a Tasmanian hospital and later incorporated into a bookshelf in the billiard room in the house of John Ramsay, the artist’s brother. Illustrating women in harmony with their environment, the figures can be identified by their corresponding landscapes as spring, summer, autumn and winter. The lyrical treatment of the figures and drapery show the influence of French symbolist Puvis de Chavanne, while the Latin inscriptions reference the romantic Pre-Raphaelite tradition. Ramsay’s embrace of these influences reveals a more poetic side to his more typically masculine work.

Onions (1905) and Still life with celery and apples (1901) by Margaret Preston

The Tea Urn (1909) by Margaret Preston

Aboriginal landscape (1941) by Margaret Preston

Margaret Preston was one of Australia’s foremost modernists. Travelling widely both in Australia and overseas brought her into direct contact with modern European art and its assimilation of oriental and so called ‘primitive’ art influences. As early as the mid 1920s Preston began to reference Aboriginal art, in some instances borrowing directly from the designs made on rainforest shields.

In Aboriginal Landscape Preston modernises the then waning landscape tradition via the visual language of Aboriginal art. Furthermore, Preston believed that it was through the influence and agency of Aboriginal art that Australia could develop a truly national art form.


The Pink Scarf (1913) by Hilda Rix Nicholas

I know very little about this artist and less about this painting, but the soft gentle colours moved me, along with the young woman's slightly wounded expression. Apparently Nicholas has been accused of painting 'picturebox perfection' but I wonder if the fear of the young woman's propensity to blend into the wallpaper is what we see reflected in her features.

French Café (1936) by Peter Purves Smith

French Café was painted towards the end of Purves-Smith’s study at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. Depicting three men and a woman seated at a table it pays homage to Cézanne’s famous series Cardplayers. The work shows, on one hand, compliance to artificial form with flattened planes, modelled figures and flat light while also representing a departure into an imaginary realm characterised by elongated arms and exaggerated facial features. A sense of alienation is evoked by the open doorway where a loan figure stands in the shadow of an isolated tree.

The Bridge (1030) by Dorrit Black

The Olive Plantation (1946) by Dorrit Black

Dorrit Black travelled overseas and studied in both London and Paris. It was her training in France in the Cubist manner in the late 1920s that led her to simplify her compositions and focus on the fundamental structures of her subjects. On her return to Australia, Black made a significant contribution to the Australian artistic community by teaching, promoting and practicing the philosophy of modernism – initially in Sydney in the early 1930s, and later in Adelaide during the 1940s.

The Olive Plantation is one of Australia’s most distinctive landscapes of the 1940s. It is a tonal depiction of the Adelaide foothills at Magill, now surrounded by suburban houses. The rounded solid forms are characteristic of Black’s modernist compositions of the 1940s.
 

Subway Escalator (1953) by Frank Hinder

Frank Hinder was an artist known for abstract and semi-abstract paintings and drawings, which expressed his belief that art is a means of revealing the fundamental laws of design that underlie the world of appearances. He not only painted and exhibited as a Modernist artist, but also worked on theatre and costume designs, commercial art for book publishers, magazines and advertising agencies, textile designs, and lithographic printmaking.

In this painting he uses tempera to produce dry, light colours and precise lines, rendering the city as a dynamic, living organism, where everything (particularly people and buildings) is in a state of endlessly altering relationships.

The Lift (1954) by John Brack

John Brack is regarded as one of the most significant Australian artists of the twentieth century. His art is characterised by his carefully considered and controlled compositions, and by his choice of subject matter, often consisting of mundane images drawn from the world around him. Of course I had to take a picture of this one to show Him Outdoors (who didn't come to the gallery with me).

The Lift belongs to an important group of works from the 1950s which reflect the awful reality of the Holocaust. Rather than making an anguished or impassioned response to this subject, Brack imbues these paintings with their power by exercising constraint. The unnerving quality of this work comes from imagining that the steps leading up to this seemingly ordinary lift are analogous to the tragic fate suffered by the Jewish people led to their deaths in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

Australian Portraits 1880 -1960 (Part Two)

Moving on to The Modernists 1920 - 1940.

The artists in this period experimented with a degree of abstraction, a concern with composition, form and colour, and with a shallow picture plane and cool, crisp precision.

Stella Bowen's portrait of Mary Widney (1927) is rendered in bold lines and depicted from viewer sees the subject in a 3/4 profile and also her image from behind as she is reflected in the mirror.

Meanwhile, Grace Cossington-Smith's Study of Head, Self-Portrait (1916) reveals the influence of Post-Impressionism in its high-key palette of pinks, blues, greens, and animated brush strokes.

My new favourite artist is Nora Heysen - ok, she's been around for a while, but she's new to me. I love her London Breakfast (1935) as she sits in her dressing gown, hunched forward over the paper with a tea-cup in hand and the breakfast things still on the table. It's gentle and soft but somehow still honest as I imagine her taking a moment to herself before hurrying on with the day.

The boy in the bathing trunks in Elise Blumann's Charles, Morning on the Swan (1935) seems to be almost stepping out of the frame. He has no face but lots of form against the rippling sea. The canvas has a flat, patterned surface, and the broad rhythmic brushstrokes and network of hatch marks are clearly visible.

Margaret Preston's Flapper (1925) is another favourite. The artist has emphasised the flat patterned surfaces of the clothing set against a shallow picture plane. The subject's rosy cheeks and bright expression suggest she is painted as a progressive young society woman, but her homely woollen dress and knitted tights are at odds with the model of the flash bohemian flapper of the 1920s.

Eric Wilson did not clutter his portraits with background detail. All attention is focused on the subject and the meticulous realism of The atist's mother (1937) is almost photographic in its detail. With her hat and coat on, and her gloves and umbrella in hand, she looks as though she is just about to go out and is only delayed by her son's request to pose.

In Christian Waller with Baldur, Undin and Siren at Fairy Hills (1932), Napier Waller has painted his wife sitting on the grass with three airedale terriers, beneath the willow trees with books and cushions. She sits fully dressed in stockings and shoes, playing with her necklace. The wide canvas is full of details to the edges - if this were a photograph we would say it was beautifully cropped.

Christian became a book illustrator and printmaker while her husband became a printmaker and worked with murals and mosaics. In the 1930s he began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaics, using a classical and formal style. This was painted at a time when he was becoming a man of the world while she was retreating into an esoteric religion. Knowing that, there seems to be some distance implied in the portrait.

Roy de Maistre was a pioneer of Australian Post-Impressionism and Abstraction. In his Self Portrait (1945) the central focus is the well-stoked fire, symbolising the belly of the artist, and suggesting a passionate and creative spirit. The bold, flattened forms and intersecting planes show the influence of cubism upon the work.

Albert Tucker, on the other hand, was influenced by the Expressionists, whose strong images responded to the social realities of the Depression - he became one of a group of Melbourne artists known as the Angry Penguins. His Self Portrait (1937) reveals a deeply penetrating gaze, foreshadowing the emotionally charged images he produced in the 1940s. The high forehead, swept back hair, mean scarf over jacket and tie, big eyes, sharp nose, full lips, one raised eyebrow, head tilted forward with chin down but eyes up, all combine to produce the effect of a knowing but quizzical look.