Hilda Rix Nicholas: Paris to Monaro

Paris to Monaro: Pleasures from the studio of Hilda Rix Nicholas

National Portrait Gallery (May - August 2013)

Pied Piper (1911)

Hilda Rix Nicholas is known for many things in the world of art, not least her war paintings. These are deliberately excluded from this exhibition which focuses on her standing as a ‘female’ artist. It highlights her imagination linked with a practical mind, resulting in intricate costume designs, images of her son in every possible guise, and a love of colour and clothing.

Born in Ballarat in 1884, Emily Hilda Rix left Australia in 1907 and travelled with her mother and sister to London. She studied at the New Art School and then the Académie Delecluse in Paris. With her sister, Elsie, she spent time in Tangier, Morocco, where she made many striking portraits and sketches, reflecting her love of light and vibrancy. One of these paintings, Grand Marché, Tanger, was bought by the French government after an exhibition.

Marchands du charbons de bois (Charcoal sellers) (1912)

The Well in the Blue, Arab Quarters (1914)

In 1916 she met and married Australian soldier, Major George Matson Nicholas DSO. He died within weeks leading a battalion in France. She drew charcoal and pastel on paper portraits of George and his two brothers, Frank and Athol; the one of her husband is particularly remarkable and the catalogue notes that the brothers evoke the Australian soldier of legend; “raffish, iconoclastic, and proud all at once”.

George Nicholas (1916)

Also during the First World War, she lost her sister and mother to typhoid fever. With amazing positivity, she continued to design and draw costumes for a matinee fundraiser for the Anzac Club and Buffet in 1917 – the exhibition includes her designs for magpie, wool, cheese, gold, gum blossom and warratah.

Hilda Rix Nicholas (as she now signed her paintings) returned to Australia in 1918 and settled in Mosman by Sydney Harbour, where she lived among ‘arty-party-loving people’. She made costumes for parties and illustrations for fairytales – Mary Mary; Simple Simon; Jack and Jill; Little Miss Muffet; Mother Hubbard; Pied Piper etc.

In 1928 she married Edgar Wright, grandson of James Wright – first magistrate of Queanbeyan and pioneer white settler of Lanyon, Cuppacumbalong and Booroomba in the Canberra region. Edgar was severely injured at Passchendaele (buried in the earth by one blast and regurgitated by another explosion). He was repatriated and took over the family farm. The Fleece is a fabulous study of her husband Edgar as he goes about his business.

The Fleece (1944)

On her travels to Europe, Hilda Rix Nicholas was determined to show viewers the virtues of the bush and pioneer life, following in the tradition of the Heidelberg School and writers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson. Her portraits of men and women of the land capture an earnest respect for hard work and rugged beauty.

The Shearers (1922-23)

At Knockalong, Hilda Rix Nicholas had a studio built to her specifications, which was completed in 1930. It was French provincial in style with a broad mediaeval-style fireplace, huge windows, soaring ceiling, a loft and a stage. It is recreated in this exhibition and furnished with mementoes from foreign lands: robes, clogs, vests, bags, belts, rugs, slippers, pots and plates, and paintings.  

It is a treat to see these artefacts collected here, along with the pictorial representations of them. Among the clothes which she loved and collected in a trunk, are a Chinese robe and Spanish shawl that she painted with a meticulous eye to the expansive colours and design. 

When she was 46, Hilda had a son, Rix, who became the focus of her life. She loved to tell him stories and play games with him, making wire and wadding minikins for their entertainment. She made portraits of Rix in every aspect of life: as a soldier, scout and shepherd among other things.

Some of the minikins Hilda made for her son, Rix

The Shepherd of Knockalong (1933)

She loved her garden and the natural surrounds, painting them with bright blue skies and Pissaro/ Cezanne-like colours. The style may evoke French Impressionism, but the eucalypts are pure Australia.

Spring in my garden, Knockalong (1940)

Country Garden, Knockalong (1945)

Hilda always loved horses and riding, and many of her paintings feature Rix’s governess and jillaroos as models.

Bringing in the Sheep (1936)

The Fair Musterer (1935)

A neighbour described Autumn evening’s golden glow as combining Hilda’s favourite subjects: humans, horses, flower garden and the Monaro landscape brought together on one large, joyously vivid canvas.

Autumn evening's golden glow (1935)

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.