Dreamlike & evocative is the Lady with sponge

 

Lady with sponge (illustrated) is a striking, intriguing work by artist Lindsay Bernard Hall (1859–1935) whose skill as an artist was often overshadowed by his other significant achievements. Hall was an artist, teacher and director of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne from 1892 to 1933. Hall is noted for his interiors and still lifes, and some of his most accomplished works were of the female form, but his role as director (and the first Felton Bequest buyer for the NGV) largely overshadowed his achievements as an artist. He created artworks that brought high standards of aesthetic merit and craftsmanship to Melbourne’s artistic community of the time.

As an artist, Hall trained in London, Antwerp and Munich, and he painted meticulously in the Munich style. A strong disciplinarian, Hall emphasised drawing and technical skills and his art displayed these qualities, though such highly finished paintings went out of fashion during his lifetime. Author Gwen Rankin notes that Hall was exhibiting more widely during the early 1920s and speculates that this may have been spurred by financial considerations or a concern to establish his status as an artist.1 In 1921, he submitted a portrait of his wife, Grace, in the first Archibald Prize, which was later awarded to his former student, William McInnes. He entered again the following year with two paintings: the first, a conventional portrait of a friend, Sir Robert Garran; and the second, the unconventional Lady with sponge. Rankin comments that the painting ‘seems to have been calculated to disconcert the men charged with judging that year’s entries’.

Lady with sponge

Although its subject matter as an entry in the Archibald was unusual, the work is typical of Hall’s structured, tonal paintings — in which he worked outwards from a dark background to a middle ground — and features reflected highlights at crucial points on the carefully built-up illusory space of the canvas. The subject — a young Scottish woman named Jean Robertson — was one of Hall’s models. In 1919, he painted her as a nun, and again in 1921 wearing a traditional Chinese costume. Rankin describes the model as having ‘two attributes that evoked the pre-Raphaelite precedent. The first was the air of brooding introspection . . . and the other was the model’s luxuriant copper-red hair’.3 Robertson posed clothed — it was Hall’s ‘challenge in the painting . . . to devise a clothed persona on whom unbound tresses would not appear contrived’.4 The solution was a simple study of a woman in shift and bath gown, with a towel over her arm and a large marine sponge in her hand. Light falls on her right, highlighting her long hair and the intricate, primitive structure of the sponge, giving her the appearance of a supplicant making a ritual offering. It recalls Hall’s early symbolist leanings and the influence of fin-de-siècle aestheticism.

Bernard Hall ‘Lady with sponge 1922

Bernard Hall, England/Australia 1859-1935 / Lady with sponge 1922 / Oil on canvas / Gift of Shaun and Suzanne Kenny through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2016. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

The quest

The Collection already holds a significant symbolist work by Hall — The quest c.1905 (illustrated) — of which the artist painted two large versions (the other is held in the NGV collection). The work was inspired by the mystic Persian poetry of ‘The Rubaiyat’ of Omar Khayyam (first published in English in 1859). The symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly. They wrote and painted metaphorically, endowing images or objects with symbolic meaning. Dreamlike and evocative of mystery, fantasy and the exotic, works were often inspired by biblical or mythological stories. Lady with sponge is redolent of such interpretation: dipped in vinegar, a sponge was offered to Christ from which to drink during Crucifixion.5 Bathing has additional associations with purification and the ritual of washing and anointing a body after death.

Bernard Hall ‘The quest’ c.1905

Bernard Hall, England/Australia 1859-1935 / The quest c.1905 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 1985 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

Symbolist paintings in the Collection

A work by George Lambert, Self portrait with Ambrose Patterson, Amy Lambert and Hugh Ramsay c.1901–03 (illustrated), comes from this tradition. Lady with sponge can be successfully displayed with this work and other Australian symbolist paintings, including Sydney Long’s Spirit of the Plains 1897 (illustrated), Arthur Loureiro’s Study for The spirit of the new moon 1888 (illustrated), and Rupert Bunny’s Una and the fauns c.1890.

George W Lambert ‘Self portrait with Ambrose Patterson, Amy Lambert and Hugh Ramsay’ c.1901-03

George W Lambert, Australia/England 1873-1930 / Self portrait with Ambrose Patterson, Amy Lambert and Hugh Ramsay c.1901-03 / Oil on canvas / Purchased 2009 with funds from Philip Bacon AM through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

Sydney Long ‘Spirit of the Plains’ 1897 

Sydney Long, Australia 1871-1955 / Spirit of the Plains 1897 / Oil on canvas on wood / 62 x 131.4cm / Gift of William Howard-Smith in memory of his grandfather, Ormond Charles Smith 1940 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

Arthur (Artur) Loureiro ‘Study for ‘The spirit of the new moon” 1888

Arthur (Artur) Loureiro, Portugal/Australia 1853–1932 / Study for ‘The spirit of the new moon’ 1888 / Oil on canvas / 56 x 165cm / Purchased 1995.  Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant with the assistance of Philip Bacon through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation.  Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary 1895-1995 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

Lady with sponge also has parallels to the biblical story of Susannah, a Jewish heroine falsely accused of adultery while at her bath. Daphne Mayo’s sculpture Susannah 1946, cast 1995, explores this theme, depicting the subject as a model of virtue, resolute and defiant on discovering she is being watched while taking her daily bath. Hall’s figure has a similar resolved demeanour and strength of character. The painting is a particularly fine example of Hall’s tonal realism, from the height of one of his most productive periods. This generous gift of Shaun and Suzanne Kenny is a welcome addition to the Collection.

Michael Hawker is Associate Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA

Endnotes
1 Gwen L Rankin, Bernard Hall: The Man the Art World Forgot, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, Sydney, 2013, p.193.
2 Rankin, p.194.
3 Rankin, p.194.
4 Rankin, p.195.
5 According to Matthew 27:48, Mark 15:36 and John 19:29, King James Version.

Featured image detail: Bernard Hall Lady with sponge 1922
#QAGOMA

Journeys North Revisited

 
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Max Pam, Australia b.1949 / Backyard on Sunday, Mooloolabah (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio) (detail) 1986 / Gelatin silver photograph / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

In the mid 1980s, with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority, the Queensland Art Gallery commissioned six photographers to produce a portfolio of black and white works on the theme of community life in Queensland. First exhibited in 1988, the Gallery now presents a comprehensive selection from this portfolio, allowing us to see how Queensland has, and hasn’t, changed in the intervening 28 years.

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Glen O’Malley, Australia b.1948 / Camooweal – Mrs Steele is in her eighties and has worked as a drover for most of her life (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio) 1987 / Gelatin silver photograph / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

In the foreword to the original exhibition’s publication, Doug Hall, AM, then director of the Gallery, wrote that ‘Journeys North’ was ‘one of the most adventurous commissions undertaken by the Queensland Art Gallery’, and that ‘although the commission was conceived as a Bicentennial project, its importance will extend long after 1988’.1 The opportunity now to see a significant selection of these works reinforces Hall’s statement that ‘not only will the images and the commission as a whole remain as an important artistic achievement, but also the themes explored will undoubtedly remain with us for years to come’.2 The state has changed in myriad ways in the intervening years, but the fascinating observation to be made in viewing these rich images again is how much the lifestyles and landscapes depicted still resonate with us.

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Graham Burstow, Australia b.1927 / Cheer squad, Carrara (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio) 1986–87 / Gelatin silver photograph / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

‘Journeys North’ focused on Queensland photography; all of the photographers involved were long-term residents of Queensland or had strong associations with the state. Graham Burstow, Lin Martin, Robert Mercer, Glen O’Malley, Charles Page and Max Pam each travelled to different regions of the state where, over a period of around 18 months, they documented the lifestyles, attitudes and values of Queensland society in the late 1980s.

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Lin Martin, Australia b.1953 / Bobby Lees, sculptor/performer/builder, Sunshine Beach (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio) 1986–87 / Gelatin silver photograph / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / © The artist

Lin Martin produced a series of portraits that captured unique characters in their own environments, prompting curator Claire Williamson to note in her 1988 catalogue essay that, ‘while in many ways [Lin’s] subjects appear as “typical” Queenslanders, each has a unique personality which emerges from the rapport developed between photographer and sitter’.3 Max Pam, inspired by his memories of childhood family holidays to the Gold Coast, chose to record his experiences through the eyes of a holidaying family. Here we see the great physical variety of the landscape, as well as an often humorous account of their holiday on the move. Glen O’Malley travelled extensively through the state, from Brisbane to Cape York and west to Camooweal, Quilpie and Cunnamulla. He concentrated on the theme of domesticity, going into Queensland homes and recording their daily experiences, from watching television to watering the garden.

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Robert Mercer, Ireland/Australia b.1949 / Jermaine Luke, David Freier, Ben Yam, Gibson Yam, Kowanyama, Cape York (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio) 1987 / Gelatin silver photograph / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Graham Burstow looked at outdoor activities and particularly leisure activities, documenting Anzac Day parades, surf-lifesaving carnivals and car-part swap meets. Robert Mercer recorded Indigenous Queenslanders of the far north, focusing on local cultures and events, and particularly the importance of ceremony and dance in these communities. Charles Page chose to examine the important place of the mining industry, visiting underground and open‑cut operations in all the large mining centres of the state. His photographs examine the unique lifestyles but also the environmental impact of mining.

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Charles Page, Australia b.1946 / Riverside mine (from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio), 1986 / Gelatin silver photograph / Purchased 1987 with the financial assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Individuality is evident in each artist’s contributions. Overall, however, these images present a coherent record of both the natural and social features of the state during this period. While some of the images questioned attitudes that had long been accepted in Australian community life, others reaffirmed the unique qualities of the Australian lifestyle and environment. Even though the lives of Queenslanders have clearly changed over the past three decades, the themes explored by these six photographers remain relevant to us today.

Endnotes
1  Doug Hall, ‘Foreword’, Journeys North, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1988, p.3.
2  Hall, p.3.
3  Claire Williamson, ‘Photographic practice in Queensland in the 1980s: One aspect’, Journeys North, p.6.

Journeys North Revisited
In 1998 six photographers each produced a portfolio on the theme of community life in Queensland.
20 February – 3 July 2016

This is an extract from the upcoming Artlines magazine. Keep up to date with the Gallery’s seasonal publication delivered each quarter.

The ‘Lure of the Sun’ on Charles Blackman

 
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Charles Blackman, Australia b.1928 / The bouquet 1961 / Oil and enamel on composition board / Purchased 1996 with support from Dr W Ross Johnston through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Charles Raymond Blackman. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2015

The time Charles Blackman spent in Queensland in the 1950s, late 1960s and the 1980s — and the friendships he made there — were central to his development as one of the most important Australian artists of his generation.

Brisbane beckoned us . . . painter mates in the city . . . and poet friends on their mountain.’ 1

During his time in Queensland, Charles Blackman was nurtured by several notable friendships with creative locals, who encouraged him to do some of his most innovative work. This diverse group of talented people included poet Judith Wright and her philosopher husband Jack McKinney; fellow artist Jon Molvig; gallery owners Marjorie and Brian Johnstone; modernist architect James Birrell; and the University of Queensland Press’s Frank Thompson.

Wright and McKinney had a considerable effect on the self-taught Blackman, coming to know him through Blackman’s wife, Barbara, who had developed a connection with Judith. Barbara recalls their first meeting, at which she and Blackman were the guests of a group of young Brisbane writers who produced the literary magazine Barjai:

. . . of all the Barjai guests, two magnetised me. Judith Wright, almost twice my young age, deaf with her awkward off-range voice . . . read her first book of unpublished poems, and JP McKinney, non-academic philosopher, gave a paper on ‘emotional honesty’. Both lifted me sky high and thereafter Jack-n-Judith became lifetime friends.2

Much later, Blackman also noted:

The influence of talking to Jack and Judith was a very strong one. Probably I spent as much time listening to them talking about poetry as in doing anything else . . . Jack was at his peak then, a great talker — and he helped me a great deal; he informed a lot of my interests in writing.3

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Charles Blackman / The family c.1955 / Oil and enamel on masonite / Gift of Barbara Blackman 2000, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra / © Charles Raymond Blackman. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2015

The work that most honours the friendship they shared is Blackman’s painting The family 1955 (of Judith Wright, Jack McKinney and their daughter, Meredith McKinney), in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The painting recalls a winter’s day picnic at Cedar Creek near Mount Tamborine. Meredith McKinney commented that:

. . . for Charles, my father was probably . . . well to say ‘father figure’ is a very simplistic thing, but the talks that he and my father had were things that sort of drew Charles into new and exciting directions.4

Blackman appears to acknowledge this link in his Portrait of Jack McKinney 1955, painted after spending the winter looking after their house at Mount Tamborine.

Regarded as one of Australia’s finest expressionist artists, Jon Molvig came to Brisbane in 1953–54 to stay with his former East Sydney Technical College classmate, John Rigby. He returned the following year and made the city his permanent home until his death in 1970. As fellow painters, it seems inevitable now that Blackman and Molvig would meet and develop a mutual respect and friendship. In the last months of 1959, Molvig persuaded Blackman to establish an art school some kilometres from Burleigh Heads. Blackman agreed to spend weekends at the school while spending the week days at his studio in Brisbane. He recalled being driven at a furious pace to and from the Gold Coast, perched precariously beside Molvig in a diminutive Goggomobil.5 Sadly, the art school project was doomed to fail, as Betty Churcher relates in her book Molvig: The Lost Antipodean (1984): ‘The venture ended dramatically after a grass fire (started accidently during an outdoor painting class) had threatened to destroy the house and the surrounding cane farms’.6 Acknowledging Molvig’s influence, Blackman said:

I got a lot from him although he and I are just about dead opposites. I was concerned with understanding and sympathy with human beings, whereas Molvig was more concerned with the human conflict.7

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Jon Molvig, Australia 1923–70 / Charles Blackman 1957 / Oil on composition board / Gift of Miss Pamela Bell in honour of Marjorie and Brian Johnstone 1986 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Cornelia Bartzis

Molvig’s 1957 portrait of Blackman alludes to this friendship, but also significantly to some of Blackman’s paintings created in the same year. Surrounded by flowers and accompanied by a white rabbit, the portrait of Blackman is ‘a parody of the imagery in some of the Alice paintings’.8

In The Third Metropolis: Imagining Brisbane through Art and Literature 1940–1970, published in 2007, William Hatherell notes that:

. . . perhaps the most important cultural institutions to develop in Brisbane during the postwar period were concerned with cultural distribution rather than production, and were located (at least partly) in the commercial sphere rather than either the governmental or the volunteer cultural spheres. These were the publishing houses Jacaranda Press and the University of Queensland Press (UQP), and the commercial art galleries, particularly the Johnstone Gallery. These institutions were particularly important for progressive individual artists in the context of a Brisbane cultural life that was predominately conservative in governmental cultural institutions such as the Queensland Art Gallery and in its volunteer ‘cultural civil society’.9

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Charles Blackman / George Johnston c.1964 / Charcoal / Gift of Miss Pamela Bell in honour of Marjorie and Brian Johnstone / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Charles Blackman c.1964. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2015

The Johnstone Gallery had a national reputation and was also a significant force in promoting Blackman’s work. This shared support and appreciation is most clearly expressed in 1986 by poet Pamela Bell,10 who gifted to the Queensland Art Gallery Molvig’s portrait of 1957 and, the following year, Blackman’s charcoal drawing of Australian writer George Johnston (c.1964).11 She made these gifts in honour of Marjorie and Brian Johnstone in recognition of the huge contribution they made to the knowledge and awareness of contemporary Australian art in Brisbane in the 1950s and 60s and to Blackman’s career. Bell wrote of Blackman’s work:

I consider it to be a drawing of Charles at his best . . . It represents for me a time of mutual friendship between us all . . . and commemorates a memorable lunch, the Blackmans, Judith Wright, George and I, so again it is in the tradition of the works I am in the process of gifting to the Gallery, which in differing ways are about friendships and eras in the cultural life of Queensland.12

Blackman was also involved in a number of UQP collaborations, which sprang from his friendship with Frank Thompson, the energetic manager of the press. UQP produced a number of significant books in the 1960s, including Ian Fairweather’s translation and illustration of The Drunken Buddha in 1965 and the artists in the ‘Queensland’ series (interview-based monographs on Blackman, Judith Wright, Milton Moon and Andrew Sibley) in 1967. Thompson first met Blackman after returning from his Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship in 1966, and they would often meet at the Royal Exchange Hotel in Toowong. They became close friends, and when Blackman moved to Sydney, Thompson’s interstate travel for work meant that they frequently caught up. This enabled a number of book collaborations, which included the publication of Barbara Blackman’s Certain Chairs in 1968, to which Blackman contributed drawings, illustrating Barbara’s account of their lives in various homes, in which familiar pieces of furniture gave continuity. In 1971, UQP also published Apparition: Poems by A. Alvarez, Paintings by Charles Blackman. The English poet and critic Alvarez originally met Blackman in London ten years earlier, and the publication was the outcome of their close friendship. The seven vivid gouaches, which are reproduced at their original size in the publication, were painted in response to Alvarez’s poems. Queensland modernist architect James Birrell first met Blackman in Melbourne in the early 1950s through the Contemporary Arts Society. He tells stories of sketching classes and Sunday lunches at Blackman’s home in Chrystobel Cresent, Hawthorn. In Life in Architecture: Beyond the Ugliness (2013), Birrell recalls walks with Blackman to designer and sculptor Clement (Clem) Meadmore’s place for a ‘drink and conversation’. Meadmore lived upstairs in a Victorian terrace house that overlooked industrial buildings and railway yards, where ‘schoolgirls walked past, sometimes skipped, in their hats and uniforms’, and ‘we studied art books with de Chirico prints in them’.13 (It was Birrell who introduced Blackman to Frank Thompson after his return from England.) They met up again by chance in 1979 on a street in Maroochydore, and Blackman wrote:

‘I loved the area and its climate and I loved meeting my friend James, who lived in an old wooden house right by the Maroochy River’.14 Birrell also introduced Blackman to the history and natural beauties of the region and encouraged him to explore the landscape, which would become a source of inspiration for Blackman’s art in the 1980s.

James Birrell’s enthusiasm for Charles Blackman as an artist was indicative of all of his Queensland contacts: regardless of vocation, they shared a deep appreciation and love of visual art and literature, and their mutual interests supported and fed Blackman’s creative process.

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Charles Blackman / The Blue Alice 1956–57 / Tempera, oil and household enamel on composition board / Purchased 2000. The Queensland Government’s special Centenary Fund / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Charles Raymond Blackman. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2015

Endnotes
1  Barbara Blackman, Glass After Glass: Autobiographical Reflections, Viking, Penguin Books Australia, Victoria, 1997, p.230.
2  Blackman, p.110.
3  Thomas Shapcott, Focus on Charles Blackman, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1967, p.15.
4  Transcript of video interview with Meredith McKinney, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, <http://www.portrait.gov.au/stories/the-family>, viewed on 25 May 2015.
5  Betty Churcher, Molvig: The Lost Antipodean, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria, 1984, p.92.
6  Churcher, p.92.
7  Laurie Thomas, The Most Noble Art of Them All: The Writings of Laurie Thomas, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1976, p.171.
8  Churcher, p.69.
9  William Hatherell, The Third Metropolis: Imagining Brisbane through Art and Literature 1940–1970, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2007, p.118.
10  Pamela Bell served on the first Council of the Australian National Gallery for seven years and on the Board of the Queensland Art Gallery for four years. She published articles in Hemisphere, Art in Australia, and was art critic for the Australian newspaper.
11  George Henry Johnston (1912–70), journalist and author, best known for his autobiographical novel My Brother Jack (London, 1964). Hailed as a landmark Australian novel, it has been a great favourite with generations of Australian readers.
12  Pamela Bell, letter to the Deputy Director, Queensland Art Gallery, date 28 January 1987, held in the QAGOMA Research Library.
13  James Birrell, A Life in Architecture: Beyond the Ugliness, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2013, p.30.
14  Charles Blackman and Al Alvarez, Rainforest, The Christensen Fund, MacMillan, Melbourne, 1988, p.4

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Michael Hawker is Associate Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA

The Photograph and Australia

 

Our understanding of Australia has been shaped by the medium of photography, its development in the 1840s parallels the growth of the colonies and settler relations with Indigenous Australians. Nineteenth-century photography was largely about recording what was encountered — the people and the landscape — as seen in the Queensland photographs of Richard Daintree (illustrated).

Richard Daintree ‘Free selector’s slab hut’

Richard Daintree, England/Australia 1832-78 / (Free selector’s slab hut) (no. 12 from ‘Images of Queensland’ series) c.1870 / Autotype on paper / 10.1 x 16.5cm (comp.) / Purchased 2009 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 30th Anniversary Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Richard Daintree, England/Australia 1832–78 / Midday camp 1864–70 / Photograph overpainted with oils / Collection: Queensland Museum, Brisbane

The early twentieth century witnessed greater artistic interpretation of the medium. Harold Cazneaux (illustrated) was one of the talented photographers who rose out of this movement, developing a unique style that foreshadowed the next wave of photographers, such as Max Dupain (illustrated) with his depiction of a rapidly changing Australia.

This change was at its most confrontational point during the protest movements of the 1960s and 70s, with the emergence of the youth-orientated counterculture, the women’s movement and indigenous land rights. This period encouraged a new type of photographer, one who used the medium as a means of personal and artistic expression as well as a potent tool for recording relationships, and the concept of our time and place in the world. A powerful example of this is the diaristic and durational photography of Sue Ford.

Photography as a practice underwent scholarly and curatorial re-evaluation in the 1970s and began to be collected seriously by public galleries. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, dynamic photographic practices, often studio-based, emerged and were informed by the theoretical discourses of postmodernism and feminism, in particular, and related the history of visual art to the various traditions of photography. Diverse new works challenged the way we looked at subject and medium, and proposed new social and artistic contexts for visual expression that continue to the present day.

Harold Cazneaux ‘Spirit of endurance’

Harold Cazneaux, Australia 1878–1953 / Spirit of endurance 1937 / Silver gelatin photograph / Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975 / Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Max Dupain ‘Sunbaker’

Max Dupain, Australia 1911-92 / Sunbaker 1937, printed early 1970s / Gelatin silver photograph on paper / 39.1 x 42.5cm (comp.) / Purchased 1995. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Max Dupain/ Copyright Agency

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The banana cutters, a rare figurative work by Margaret Olley

 

The banana cutters, a rare figurative work by the much loved Australian artist Margaret Olley (1923-2011) is an intriguing and valuable addition to our Collection.

Working in the second half of the twentieth century, Olley made traditional still life and interior subjects uniquely her own. It was in Brisbane in the 1960s that she first established what would become a national reputation. Arguably one of her most productive and creative periods, a number of works from the Brisbane period drew their inspiration from the human figure. However, as curator Barry Pearce has noted, Olley’s interest in the figure did not last:

. . .over time, figure painting began to recede from her repertoire, with the exception of her own image, a detached observer occasionally seen reflected from a mirror, or amongst objects of her domestic surroundings.1

Between 1960 and 1963, Olley painted several figurative works, including some that feature Aboriginal girls as subjects, several of which were awarded prizes and garnered her further critical acclaim. Olley’s 1962 exhibition at the Johnstone Gallery in Brisbane created nationwide publicity with the information that paintings to the value of £3000 were sold, doubling the previous record for a woman artist. Reviewing the 1962 exhibition for the Bulletin, Dr JV Duhig remarked ‘Margaret Olley has reached the flood tide of her art and has stepped up to the top ranks of our artists’.2

The banana cutters

Margaret Olley, Australia 1923-2011 / The banana cutters 1963 / Oil on board / 95 x 121cm / Purchased 2014 with funds from Drs Philip and Lenna Smith through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Margaret Olley Art Trust

Painted in 1963, Olley’s The banana cutters is historically significant because of its combination of uniquely Queensland subject matter and exemplary figure painting. Pearce notes that ‘1959 marked a crucial turning point in her career when she gave up drinking and set herself towards becoming a better artist’.3 The early 1960s were tremendously successful for Olley: with a new found enthusiasm and energy she became more confident in her compositional design and use of colour. The banana cutters embodies these qualities, and was awarded first prize at Brisbane’s 1963 Royal National and Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland Exhibition of Art.

RELATED: Margaret Olley

Margaret Olley’s prizewinning painting Banana cutters 1963 being examined by judge James Wieneke / Image courtesy: News Ltd/Newspix

Three male workers appear on a banana plantation. The figures interact with each other through the labour at hand, one hoisting the bright green banana stem on his shoulder while the others cut and sort bananas into a box. The viewer’s eye is drawn from the shadowed interior of the shed to the bright light and vegetation outside, framed by the window and doorway. At the time of painting, three of Olley’s major prizes were for flower and figure studies. They included the 1963 Bendigo Prize for Girl with daturas, the 1963 Finney’s Centenary Art Prize for Susan with flowers, and the 1965 Redcliffe Art Contest for Patricia with fruit and flowers. The banana cutters follows this figure-and-still-life format but with a uniquely masculine working subject. The male figures, like the Indigenous subject of Susan with flowers, are depicted with an innate, quiet dignity that is enhanced by Olley’s choice of harmonious colour relationships.

Susan with flowers

Margaret Olley, Australia 1923-2011 / Susan with flowers 1962 / Oil on canvas / 127.4 x 102.3cm / Gift of Finney Isles and Co. Ltd. 1964 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA
Critic and artist Sir Herbert Read and Margaret Olley looking at Olley’s
Susan with flowers 1962, winner of the Finney’s Centenary Art Prize / Courtesy: QAGOMA Research Library

The workers may be of South Sea Islander descent, pointing to the history the South Sea Islanders recruited — or abducted — from across Melanesia between 1863 and 1904, and brought to work across Queensland and northern New South Wales. It is interesting to compare their depiction here with that of artist Donald Friend, who previously travelled with Olley to north Queensland to paint and who presented his Islander subjects in a more romanticised, idyllic style. Olley’s figures are represented by a straightforward realism, in the performance of their labour.

From a period in Margaret Olley’s career marked for its vitality and creative freedom, The banana cutters adds great depth to the Gallery’s holdings. Through its intriguing subject matter and masterly rendering of colour and light, the painting is an invaluable addition to the Collection by this much loved Australian artist.

Michael Hawker is Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA

Endnotes
1  Barry Pearce, Margaret Olley, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1996, p.19.
2  JV Duhig, ‘The flood tide’, Bulletin, Sydney, 3 November 1962.
3  Pearce, p.17.

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Feature image detail: Margaret Olley The banana cutters 1963
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George W Lambert’s ‘War composition’, a memory of World War One

 

Australian war artists have made a rich contribution to Australian art, while playing a significant role in Australia’s interpretation of its wartime history. One of Australia’s earliest and most respected was George W. Lambert, who produced a number of notable war works, including Walk (An incident at Romani) 1919–22, which was commissioned and gifted to QAGOMA by the 2nd Light Horse Ambulance in memory of comrades who did not return from the war.

George W Lambert, Australia/England 1873-1930 / (War composition) c.1922 / Oil on canvas / 33.5 x 42cm / Gift of Philip Bacon, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2013. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

(War composition) c.1922 was painted after Lambert had completed his appointment as a war artist and had returned to Australia in 1921. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Lambert, unable to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force in London, spent most of the war years in the Voluntary Training Corps, where he taught horse-riding, and later as a divisional works officer supervising timber-getting in Wales. It was not until December 1917 that he was appointed as an official war artist, AIF, with the honorary rank of lieutenant, and commissioned to execute 25 sketches and to paint The Charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba on 31 October 1917. This was an intense period of artistic activity that involved travelling to Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine.

It is believed (War composition) may have been cut down from a larger, unresolved painting, which initially included a scene of figures in a similar landscape, with this painting occupying the top right-hand corner. The larger painting was possibly a preliminary concept for the War Memorial mural competition for the State Library of Victoria. There is other evidence of Lambert recycling works: the painting Portrait of Thea Proctor 1905, which features the head of the sitter, is in actuality a small section cut from a much larger painting originally entitled Alethea (also 1905). Another painting by Lambert that has been cropped from a larger original is The artist and his wife 1904. Evidence suggests that the work was in the artist’s studio at the time of his death and exhibited at Anthony Horderns Gallery, Sydney, in 1930.

RELATED: ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as Anzacs, and the pride they took in that name endures to this day.

RELATED: George W. Lambert

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George W Lambert, Australia/England 1873-1930 / The artist and his wife 1904 / Oil on canvas / 81.2 x 81.5cm / Purchased 1965 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

We have no knowledge of Lambert travelling to the battlefields in France, so we can assume that (War composition) may have been inspired by a photograph or perhaps a press description. This tranquil rural scene of wheat sheaves and fields is marred by the blasted stump of a tree, broken fence palings and the carcass of a horse. In the background, the open fields appear to be marked by what could be trenches and bomb craters; the only sign of potential life is a group of buildings. The painting depicts a different theatre of war from Lambert’s Walk (An incident at Romani).

George W. Lambert, Australia/England 1873-1930 / Walk (An incident at Romani) 1919-22 / 92 x 138.1cm / Oil on canvas / Gift of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance in memory of Comrades who did not return from the war c.1922 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

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