A leg through the ceiling: the art collection of Etta and Emmanuel Hirsh

Etta and Emmanuel Hirsh were both born in Poland in the early 1930s. Before the Second World War, Poland was home to a richly diverse set of Jewish cultures and communities comprising of a population of over 3 million.i Emmanuel Herszkowicz’s parents lived in the bustling city of Lodz, a centre for textile manufacturing in Europe. Etta Kurtz was born in the small village of Ostroleka, joining her older brother Sam and parents. Growing anti-Semitism in Europe was making the lives of both families impossible so they made the difficult decision to leave their homeland in search of safety.ii

The Herszkowicz family had a cousin in Melbourne and migrated to Australia after a time in London, around 1938. Etta’s father arrived in Melbourne around the same time ahead of his family and hoped to raise enough money to relocate them the following year. But as the war escalated their lives were increasingly in danger. Etta’s uncle helped pool together what resources they had and managed to get Etta, Sam and their mother on one of the last ships that left Europe.iii Many family members and the remaining Jewish communities in Poland did not survive following the invasion by German forces in 1939.

Life in Naarm/Melbourne

The Herszkowicz family settled in Carlton, and they were fortunate to bring with them a cloth making machine they had ordered from London. Emmanuel’s father and uncle set up a small factory and began making textiles. After several setbacks they focused on making gloves for women and, around this time, they anglicised their surname to Hirsh. Their new business venture took off and soon expanded.iv Operating as Mary Lyn Lingerie they produced a range of undergarments and nightwear for women that were popular in post-war Melbourne.

The Kurtz family also settled and became part of the Carlton Jewish community. Etta arrived as a young child suffering from malnutrition and spent a great deal of time in the Royal Children’s Hospital. Later as an adult Etta was diagnosed with Coeliac disease.v Etta’s parents had their own successful business making clothing and worked long hours while Etta attended the Princess Hill Primary school where Emmanuel Hirsh also studied.

Etta had a love of art, cinema and acting but left school early, undertaking secretarial studies at Coburg High School. Etta began working for Donaghy’s Rope and Cordage, spending her lunch hours wandering the lanes and arcades of the city.vi The Primrose Pottery Shop was one of her favourite places to visit and where she purchased her first ceramic artwork in 1956, a large bowl by Hermia and David Boyd.

The Hirsh family moved to East Malvern and Emmanuel attended University High school. He had strong grades and studied business completing a management course at the Gordon Institute in Geelong (now Deakin University). And after graduating, he found work in the textiles industry before he was invited to join the family business in 1953. Around the same time Etta and Emmanuel began dating, they frequented Sully’s Coffee Shop and Il Cappucino in St. Kilda and Mirka’s café on Elizabeth Street – considered ‘it’ places for progressive culture at the time.vii

After marrying in 1957, Etta and Emmanuel moved into a flat in St Kilda. On a driving holiday to Sydney while expecting their first child, they discovered the Aladdin Pottery Shop in Elizabeth Bay and made their first serious purchase together, beginning their lifelong love of collecting. Irwin was born in 1960 and their daughters Mitta and Anouk followed shortly after in 1961 and 1962.

The Melbourne Art Scene

The war years saw a renewed interest in Australian art. Local galleries in Melbourne professionalised and began displaying more serious and specialised exhibitions of local artists. As historian Ann Galbally notes in her online archive of post war Melbourne. ‘By the late 1950s contemporary Australian art was becoming highly marketable and a rush of new commercial galleries were established, this included Australian Galleries (1956) and Gallery A (1959). viii

In the 1960s this interest in new modern art intensified, with each new gallery attempting to be seen as more avant-garde. In 1967 Georges Mora opened Tolarno Gallery and other new galleries were established including Sweeney Reed’s Strines Gallery (1966), Bruce Pollard’s Pinacotheca (1967) and Realities Gallery (1971).

As the Hirsh family grew, they moved to a new house in Caulfield and renovated. Etta was entrusted to choose a new painting for their home and decided on a challenging work depicting the difficult lives of First Peoples by Desmond Norman from the Toorak Gallery. Emmanuel was immediately moved by the artwork, and it became one of their first painting purchases. While visiting Gallery A, Etta and Emmanuel were confronted by the hard-edged and abstract artworks by Peter Clarke, Michael Johnson, and others. At the Nicholas Hiedrich Gallery in Healesville they made their second major artwork purchase, Recollections of a Lonely Transvestite (1964) by Gareth Samson. A return visit to Gallery A was spent discovering an appreciation for abstraction and eventually they purchased the large grey painting Through and Beyond (1966) by Peter Clarke.ix

The Hirsh Collection

Within two short years Etta and Emmanuel Hirsh had become dedicated art collectors, acquiring major artworks by Australia’s leading artists of the time. The Hirshes became a significant part of a small yet trailblazing group of individuals and philanthropic families in Melbourne that were instrumental in their support of the emerging art scene. In 1968 the National Gallery of Victoria re-opened in its new premises with the ground-breaking exhibition The Field. The Hirshes prided themselves on lending an artwork by Dale Hickey to the exhibition.

Over the next two decades the Hirshes expanded their collection considerably. At one time the collection consisted of over 600 artworks by around 156 artists. Adding to this, Etta had established a ceramics collection of over 350 pieces by leading Australian post-war potters and ceramic artists. Highlights from the collection included works by Brett Whiteley, Rosalie Gascoigne, John Olsen, Mirka Mora, Peter Booth, Mike Brown, Asher Bilu, Howard Arkley and Charles Blackman, among many others.

Art and artists increasingly became an intrinsic part of Etta, Emmanuel and their families’ lives. When they renovated their next home in South Yarra they employed a young artist, Peter Corlett, to manage the build. Peter worked with an assistant named Les Gilbert. One day when Les was working in the attic he fell, and his leg went right through the ornate plaster ceiling of the dining room. Etta was devasted but Peter was undeterred and the next day he called to say the hole was fixed. He had plugged it with a cast of his leg and with Emmanuel’s encouragement the sculpture became a permanent fixture in their home and a talking point of every dinner party.x Peter Corlett became a life-long friend of Emmanuel and Etta Hirsh.

The Hirshes didn’t stop at supporting artists strictly through purchases. They also hosted regular dinner parties and many of the artists in their collection enjoyed their company and generosity. In the 1970s Etta and Emmanuel set up an annual fund of $10,000 which they gave directly to artists to help support their artistic careers. Emmanuel also joined the Melbourne University Art Advisory Board and in the 1980s he became a board member of the Australian Print Workshop.

In the 1980s Emmanuel decided to reduce his business activities due to ill health, and in 1991 the clothing manufacturing factory closed to focus on their well-being. With less opportunity and time to spend on art, the Hirshes collecting slowed throughout the 1990s, but they continued acquiring artworks right up until 2007. In their later years, Etta and Emmanuel allocated their collection to family, as well as, donating a significant portion to public institutions across Victoria and Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, La Trobe University, Monash Health, St. Vincent’s Hospital, and the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute. In 2021 thirtynine artworks were donated to the Deakin University Art Collection by Etta and Emmanuel’s son Irwin Hirsh, daughter Anouk Hulme and grandson Adrian Hirsh. This exhibition acknowledges the wonderful generosity of this gift and the continuation of Etta and Emmanuel’s cultural legacy.

James Lynch Curator, Art Collection and Galleries

i https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933population-data-by-country [Accessed 10 October 2022] ii Luba Bilu, An Ordinary Couple: Emmanuel and Etta Hirsh, self-published, 2009, pp.5-7 iii Ibid, p.9 iv Ibid v Ibid vi Ibid, p.11 vii Ibid, p.13 viii https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00090b.htm [Accessed 10.10.22] ix Ibid, p.23 x Peter Corlett in email conversation with the author 25 September 2022