Category: Collection

Works by Auguste Rodin offer an insight into his practice

Posted by Abigail Bernal   ●   29 Oct 2019

The charismatic and obsessive French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) remains a fascinating figure, his work, the subject of numerous controversies during his lifetime, continues to inspire debate, particularly his intimate representations of the female figure. There is little dispute, however, about his importance to modern sculpture and his continuing influence on contemporary artists, writers, and…

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William Dobell: Substance and Spirit

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   28 Oct 2019

In 1942 a visit by Daphne Mayo (1895-1982) to William Dobell’s Kings Cross studio in Sydney resulted in the acquisition of The Cypriot 1940 (illustrated) for the Queensland National Art Gallery’s Collection (now QAGOMA). Just two years after its completion Mayo had purchased Dobell’s largest and most ambitious work — the subject of many preliminary…

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The allure of the savage beauty of Belle-Île

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   16 Oct 2019

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the fierce wildness and ‘savage beauty’ of Belle-Île, the small island off the coast of Quiberon in Brittany, France, exerted a powerful attraction to creative artists of a late-romantic temperament. Delve into why Belle-Île’s temperate climate, magnificent coastline, and 60 beaches became a magnet for Australian impressionist…

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Ian Fairweather: Life lines

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   8 Oct 2019

The QAGOMA Research Library holds a collection of letters, photographs and other memorabilia relating to the famously reclusive artist Ian Fairweather, who spent the last two decades of his life in a hut on Bribie Island. A new book Ian Fairweather: A Life in Letters from Text Publishing compiles several hundred of Fairweather’s letters, which…

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This portrait of Albert Namatjira has become his most identifiable image

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   29 Sep 2019

A conventional portrait — a seated half-figure painted from life — which is disrupted by the subject’s race. In mid-twentieth-century Australia, Indigenous people had rarely figured in a genre that confirmed the status of ‘elder statesman’ upon its (mainly male) subjects. William Dargie’s Portrait of Albert Namatjira 1956 (illustrated) has subsequently become the most identifiable…

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