2007.Q2 | artonview 50 Winter 2007

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= GEORGE W LAMBERT • Very Important photographs

A brushstroke into our past

George Lambert The squatter’s daughter 1923–24 Michelago / New South Wales / Australia Oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the generous assistance of James Fairfax AO and Philip Bacon AM, 1991

ActewAGL is delighted to be major sponsor of the George Lambert Retrospective: Heroes and Icons exhibition. Lambert’s painting The squatter’s daughter, depicting Michelago in 1923, is symbolic to ActewAGL as it reflects on a time when ActewAGL was building the foundations to provide essential services to Canberra and the region.

Recognising the importance of Australian art – always.

29 June – 9 September 2007 National Gallery of Austr alia, Canberr a George Lambert The white glove 1921 (detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased 1922 photograph: Jenni Carter for AGNSW

nga.gov.au

ActewAGL Retail ABN 46 221 314 841.

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Director’s foreword

Publisher National Gallery of Australia nga.gov.au

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Development office

Editor Jeanie Watson

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George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons

Designer MA@D Communication

16 Conservation: restoring Lambert

Photography Eleni Kypridis Barry Le Lievre Brenton McGeachie Steve Nebauer John Tassie

18 VIP: very important photographs 1840s–1940s

Designed and produced in Australia by the National Gallery of Australia Printed in Australia by Pirion Printers, Canberra artonview issn 1323-4552 Published quarterly: Issue no. 50, Winter 2007 © National Gallery of Australia Print Post Approved pp255003/00078 All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The opinions expressed in artonview are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

28 The Southeast Asian Gallery 34 Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 36 New acquisitions 50 Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 54 Colin McCahon: writing and imagining a journey 57 Travelling exhibitions 58 Faces in view

Submissions and correspondence should be addressed to: The editor, artonview National Gallery of Australia GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 artonview.editor@nga.gov.au Advertising (02) 6240 6587 facsimile (02) 6240 6427 artonview.advertising@nga.gov.au RRP: $8.60 includes GST Free to members of the National Gallery of Australia For further information on National Gallery of Australia Membership contact: Coordinator, Membership GPO Box 1150 Canberra ACT 2601 (02) 6240 6504 membership@nga.gov.au

front cover: George W Lambert The convex mirror c. 1916 oil on wood panel 50.0 x 50.0 cm Private collection

direc tor’s foreword

Daniel Boyd, Arthur Pambegan Jnr, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Philip Gudthaykudthay at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial

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Welcome to the fiftieth issue of the magazine!

This month is marked by much excitement as the National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery has just opened to the public, with two of the greatest works in the collection returned to their original home – Brancusi’s black and white marble Birds in space have been reinstated on their sandstone bases into their calm pool in the only gallery within an Australian museum dedicated to sculpture.

When the National Gallery of Australia opened twenty-five years ago, the Sculpture Gallery was a unique, contemplative space. Closed as a sculpture gallery in 1990 in the quest for more room for exhibitions and other uses, it now seems time to try to do justice to some of our threedimensional masterpieces in this grand space. Donald Judd’s brass boxes, Jannis Kounellis’ Senza titolo, Louise Bourgeois’ pink wooden C.O.Y.O.T.E. and Anselm Kiefer’s magisterial Abendland and The secret life of plates are joined by works from renowned Australian artists Rosalie Gascoigne, Robert Klippel and Ken Unsworth.

Some exciting new acquisitions are also on show – above all Max Ernst’s giant black bronze Habakuk, a striking and menacing work purchased with the assistance of the National Australia Bank. Others include Cy Twombly’s elegant pale bronze purchased last year with the assistance of Ros Packer and other donors, Anthony

national gallery of australia

Caro’s Duccio variations no. 7, and Stella’s Mersin XVI to be donated in honour of the late Harry Seidler by Ken Tyler.

Other Australian artists represented in the display include Indigenous artist Glen Farmer Illortaminni and Bronwyn Oliver, who unfortunately died last year.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Margaret Olley AC for her very generous donation towards the Mughal arcade in the Asian Gallery, a stunning work proving to be very popular with visitors.

Another satisfying development in our permanent displays will be the opening of a dedicated Pacific Arts Gallery, overseen by the newly appointed curator for the collection, Crispin Howarth. The small Pacific Arts Gallery exhibits more than thirty of the finest works revealing the diversity and depth of the art of our Pacific neighbours.

Since 1969 the Pacific Arts collection has been growing, however, apart from the acquisition of prints, we stopped adding to the collection from 1985 until the acquisition of the Anthony Forge memorial gift and the purchase of the very significant late nineteenth-century Solomon Islands house post last year. Our Pacific Arts collection comprises close to 2000 works and we will be adding major works in the future. The collection encompasses Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia with myriad island cultures stretching from Papua New Guinea

to New Zealand and the Bismarck archipelago to Easter Island. During the past quarter of a century, the Gallery has only displayed a handful of works from this intriguing collection. Formed from the arts of preliterate cultures from 1500 BC to around 1950, these works hold a visual force intended to convey the will of ancestors and their mastery over the world of man in a way that words alone could never express. The names of the Pacific artists were unfortunately very rarely recorded, although there are many famous names associated with the collection: Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Jacob Epstein, Sir William Dargie, Douglas Newton, Lady Drysdale, King Kalakaua of Hawaii to name a few.

I am also pleased to announce the Gallery’s new major art initiative, the National Indigenous Art Triennial.

Generously sponsored by BHP Billiton, the Triennial comprises works created by artists from every state and territory within the past three years, resulting in a highly considered snapshot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contemporary art practice. The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial exhibition, Culture Warriors, is curated by Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia. Culture Warriors will be on display at the Gallery from 13 October 2007 to 10 February 2008. The opening will coincide with our twenty-fifth anniversary party.

George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is the first major retrospective of the work of George Lambert since his death in 1930. He is Australia’s preeminent war artist, an outstanding draughtsman, an occasional painter of delightful landscapes and flowerpieces, and the finest Australian painter of his time for figure compositions and portraits. In the 1920s he also became an excellent sculptor, second only to Rayner Hoff in Australia. During that last decade of his life Lambert was by far our most famous artist.

It is very appropriate that this one-venue exhibition has been staged in Canberra by the National Gallery of Australia. We own a fine collection of Lambert’s paintings and drawings, but more particularly there are the iconic Great War paintings, commissioned for the Australian War Memorial, that cannot travel from Canberra, and need to be seen for the first time in the full context of his oeuvre. Other works are borrowed from public and private collections from all over Australia. The exhibition, curated

by Dr Anne Gray, Head of Australian Art at the Gallery and the foremost authority on the subject, is generously supported by ActewWAGL.

Another interesting temporary exhibition on show at the moment is VIP: very important photographs 1840s– 1940s. The exhibition showcases more than 200 works from the Gallery’s extensive photography collection – from pioneers of mid 19th-century photography such as William Henry Talbot Fox and Julia Margaret Cameron to the years after the Second World War with works by Henri CartierBresson, Man Ray, Olive Cotton and Walker Evans. While some photographs have become national icons such as Max Dupain’s Sunbaker, there are many hidden gems not as widely recognised in the public realm. The collection demonstrates the power and history of photography and portrays significant developments of the art medium during its first century of existence. The exhibition, curated

by Gael Newton, Senior Curator, Photography, and Anne O’Hehir, Curator, Photography, is on display across the Orde Poynton and Project galleries. It is sponsored by EMC Australia and Infront Systems.

We will be launching in August the special twentyfifth anniversary exhibition Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 which I have curated and selected to tour nine of the smaller galleries throughout Australia.

As we focus on an exceptionally busy and exciting exhibition program and other events for our twentyfifth anniversary, we are also in the stages of formal planning approvals for the proposed building additions so construction can start later in the year.

Ron Radford AM

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credit lines

The following donations have been received as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program.

Donations R & M Champion de Crespigny Foundation Jacob Grossbard Warwick Hemsley and Family Meredith Hinchliffe Julie Kantor Maurice Newman AC and Jeannette Newman Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust Roslyn Packer AO Greg and Kerry Paramor Grestchen Philip Dick Smith AO and Philippa Smith Gifts Phillip Berry Susan Bienkowski The late Jenny Brennan Peter Burns Doreen Coburn Ian Dudgeon Joachim Froese John McBride John McPhee Adrian Slinger Petronella Windeyer Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 Annan Boag Susan Boden Parsons Cynthia, Richard, Laura and Penelope Coleman Esther Constable Ann Cork David Franks James Hanratty: In memory of Dr Phillip Hanratty Sue Hegarty

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national gallery of australia

Janet D Hine C and J Hurlstone Claudia Hyles Judith Carol Johnson Sir Richard Kingsland AO, CBE, DFC Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM Margaret J Mashford Shirley Jean O’Reilly Kim Paterson Kevin Riley Judith Roach in memory of Joan Coulter Alan Rose AO and Helen Rose Kenneth Saxby Kim Snepvangers Elizabeth Ward: In memory of her beloved husband Ronald Dr Stephen Wild Lady Joyce Wilson Graham and Evelyn Young We would also like to thank the numerous anonymous donors who have donated to Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007.

Sponsorship NAB BHP Billiton ActewAGL Brassey Hotel of Canberra Casella Wines EMC Australia Forrest Inn and Apartments Gordon Darling Foundation Hindmarsh Infront Systems Saville Park Suites

development of fice

The first half of this year has proved to be a very busy and exciting period for the Gallery. We are delighted to announce several new partnerships, as well as welcoming back two loyal corporate supporters. The Gallery greatly values corporate support and is thrilled that our exciting exhibition program has attracted some of Australia’s leading corporations.

BHP and the National Indigenous Arts Triennial On 18 April, the National Gallery of Australia announced a major new arts initiative as well as a significant new corporate partnership. The Gallery is delighted that BHP Billiton has agreed to support the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial which will open at the Gallery on 13 October. Mr Chris Lynch, Excecutive Director and Group President, Carbon Steel Materials, BHP Billiton, attended and spoke at the media launch held at the Gallery on 18 April 2006. The Triennial, Culture Warriors, will be curated by Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Gallery and a member of the Gurindji and Mudpurra communities. Artists selected for Culture Warriors include Philip Gudthaykudthay, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr and Daniel Boyd who visited the Gallery on the day of the announcement. BHP Billiton’s generous contribution will enable the exhibition to be displayed at the National Gallery of Australia and also to tour to Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.

National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery For the first time since 1990, the space designed for and devoted to sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia has been returned to its original purpose. It has been extensively restored, refurbished and relit and includes the reinstatement of Brancusi’s iconic Birds in a reflecting pool.

The National Australia Bank Sculpture Gallery will display new acquisitions, purchased with the assistance of the National Australia Bank’s annual contribution, alongside sculptures already in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection.

ActewAGL and George Lambert As well as welcoming two new corporate partners to the Gallery family, it is also fitting that one of the Gallery’s most loyal local supporters, ActewAGL, is partnering the Gallery to present George W Lambert retrospective: heroes

and icons during this twenty-fifth anniversary year. This is the most comprehensive exhibition of Lambert’s work in more than thirty years and is only on display at the Gallery in Canberra. Previously, ActewAGL has sponsored Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles, Chihuly: masterworks in glass and Bill Viola: the passions.

Chris Lynch (BHP) addresses Rupert Myer, Ron Radford, and artists Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, (accompanied

by Angela Hill), Philip Gudthaykudthay and Peter Minygululu at the announcement of the National Indigenous Art Triennial

VIP and EMC Australia/Infront Another previous supporter of the Gallery, EMC Australia, in conjunction with Infront Systems, is supporting VIP: very important photographs 1840s–1940s. This exhibition provides an insight into the range of photographs by Australian and international photographers in the national collection. Previously, EMC sponsored The Edwardians exhibition in 2004.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary Gift Program The National Gallery of Australia Foundation is planning a series of activities for Foundation members during the twenty-fifth anniversary year. The Foundation has initiated a gift program targeting $25 million dollars, which will be the result of corporate sponsorship and benefaction during the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2007 Thank you to all donors who have already donated to the Masterpieces for the Nation fund for 2007. Please find enclosed a brochure in this edition of artonview, or if you would like further information please phone the Development Office on (02) 6240 6454. artonview

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exhibition galleries

George W Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons 29 June – 16 September 2007

George W Lambert Self-portrait (unfinished) c. 1930 oil on canvas 91.5 x 75.0 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased 1930

‘Don’t call me an artistic genius’, George W Lambert told

camouflage his inner self. He confessed to his wife that he

a reporter from the Sydney Mail in 1922; he would much

was grateful to keep going without letting everyone know

rather have been told that he had done his job well, ‘as one

about his periods of melancholy.7 She was well acquainted

might address a bricklayer’. He said this because when he

with this side of him and suggested that his extrovert

returned to Australia in 1921 after twenty years in Paris

behaviour was a shield against his impressionable nature.

and London he was treated like a returning hero, féted

Like many creative people he was highly sensitive and from

by the press and wined and dined by members of the

time to time was unable to manage his stress or his bouts

government and wealthy patrons – the artists in Victoria

of depression – and in such moments he needed privacy.

welcomed him at a dinner at the Café Français, Melbourne,

His temperament is evident within his work which at times

on 15 April 1921, and later that year the New South Wales

shows considerable empathy and perception and at others

Society of Artists held an official dinner in his honour at

a remarkable brilliance – and wit.

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the Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, on 29 June. All the items on the menu were inspired by his work: ‘The Mask Cocktail’, ‘Salade Lambertine’ and ‘Important Peaches’. In the end, he had to escape the enjoyable but overwhelming hospitality in Sydney. He told his wife Amy that he had ‘bolted’ from Sydney, because ‘everybody seemed to think my mission was to sit back and talk old memories’, but that was not his way – he could not spend too much time socialising because he needed to get on with his work.2

Lambert was tall and slender with light reddish hair

and a van Dyke beard; an athletic man with ‘a forceful, challenging, robust, aggressive quality’, who had been a boxer in his youth and was good with horses.3 He was fond of music, had a baritone voice, an enquiring mind ‘with an interest in the universe and whatever laws controlled both it and him’, and was sceptical of all religions.4 He is

and hard work. His art teacher Julian Ashton said that ‘no detail was too small’ to escape Lambert’s attention, ‘no labour too great’ to achieve his goal, ‘he was ever his own severest critic’.8 The great Australian landscape painter Hans Heysen claimed that of course there is ‘always the Poser in Lambert but his downright sincerity when it comes to the art of painting demands the greatest respect’.9 His assistant Arthur Murch was inspired by Lambert’s gospel of devotion to work.10

The Australian official historian CEW Bean suggested

that he ‘worked like an assiduous student’, and that ‘there was no trace of affectation in the sincerity with which he set to work’, ‘he was completely ruled by some high motive within’.11 After Lambert’s death, a friend wrote to Amy:

said to have had great charm and to be able to move easily

If we went to his studio we would find him hard

in fashionable circles as well as among humble people,

at work from early morning until late at night; his

tempering his manner to the mood of the company. He

heart and soul were in his work there, and there is

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no doubt his strength was undermined by constant

could be the life and soul of a gathering, an entertaining

hard work.12

raconteur, radiating good fellowship with his wit, goodwill

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Different people admired Lambert for varying reasons,

but they almost universally praised him for his discipline

and capacity for mimicry.6

when he was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1927 for the

He was more than that, for he was a kind of

When Lambert’s sister Sadie wrote to congratulate him

chameleon with a variety of personalities: a gentle, kindly

portrait Mrs Annie Murdoch 1927, he replied ‘when one

and sympathetic one for his friends and a brilliant and

weighs the failures with the successes one finds it easy to

flamboyant presence for his acquaintances and the public.

keep a level head’ and that ‘fortunately I am too busy to

While creating fun and provoking laughter, he was said to

enjoy limelight’.13

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George W Lambert Mrs Annie Murdoch 1927 oil on canvas 59.6 x 49.5 cm The Murdoch collection George W Lambert Self-portrait c. 1906 oil on canvas 46.3 x 38.2 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, The Joseph Brown Collection (opposite) George W Lambert Life study 1909 pencil 35.4 x 24.7 cm State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Gift of John Brackenreg in 1974

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Lambert reflected his complex personality in his

In the audacious Life study of 1909, Lambert depicted

many self-portraits, in which he presented himself as

the familiar goatee beard and receding hairline; but

an actor playing a role. Artists often paint their own

this man’s hair seems to be even more receding than

portrait because they are in need of a model and the

Lambert’s, his eyebrows higher, his cheeks chubbier and

subject is readily available and because they can be freer

his beard thicker. Indeed, it most probably is not a self-

with themselves than they can with any other subject.

portrait, but an image of a model with similar features

Rembrandt delighted in putting on different costumes and

to Lambert. In tricking us into thinking it may be a self-

guises, as did Lambert’s British associate and one of the

portrait we cannot but wonder whether Lambert was

most successful of Edwardian portrait painters, William

playing a game, whether he chose such a model to create

Orpen. So when Lambert painted himself in a variety of

a jest. While not yet making fun of himself he was on

ways, in a pose derived from Velázquez or in a theatrical

his way to doing so. And in portraying this man with his

stance wearing fancy dress, he was working within an

trousers around his feet, he made him appear outrageously

established tradition.

naked rather than nude.

Lambert’s second oil self-portrait of 1906 is among his

By 1922 Lambert was a success, he was at the height

most austere. He adopted a spare composition in which

of his powers and he had been elected an Associate of

he focused on the head, free from any distractions. His

the Royal Academy. He had recently painted a dashing

tonalist approach derives from Velázquez, as does the

portrait of Miss Gladys Collins, The white glove 1921, in

way he framed his head in darkness to draw attention to

which he captured her vivacious personality, laughing with

it. While it is a youthful portrait the face has a startling

her head tilted back, hamming it up for him. He followed

presence and alertness. He looked at himself intensely, not

this with his Self-portrait with gladioli 1922, a bravura

just studying the structure and form of his physiognomy,

image of himself posing artificially, as if giving a speech.

but also enquiring as to who he is and what his future

Although he was a dedicated artist who worked to the

might be. There is a slight arrogance in the fixity of his

point of exhaustion, he presented himself here as the

glance and the thrust of his chin, but a sense of enquiry in

affected, self-admiring dandy, the precious, self-assured

his glance. It is a serious portrait of an earnest young man

aesthete some considered him to be. It was an elaborate

on his way to success without any hint of the sense of fun

joke, a fiction which he acted out to its limit. He wittily

that he was later to give to his self-portraits.

paid homage to the self-portrait by the first President of

national gallery of australia

George W Lambert Self-portrait with gladioli 1922 oil on canvas 128.2 x 102.8 cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, gift of John Schaeffer AO in 2003 George W Lambert The official artist 1921 oil on canvas 91.7 x 71.5 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased through the Felton Bequest in 1921 (opposite) George W Lambert Self-portrait 1927 pencil 38.5 x 28.2 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased in 1955

the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds (Royal Academy, London), in which Reynolds depicted himself dressed in his academic robes, standing aristocratically with his right hand on his hip. He also made reference to the classical marble sculpture, the Hermes Logios (National Museum of Rome), an image of the god of eloquence who, like Lambert in this portrait, stands with one arm raised up as if speaking. He was laughingly positing himself as Australia’s chief Academician and artistic orator. The following year at the Society of Artists’ Ball Lambert took the joke further with his friend Leon Gellert dressing up as Lambert had in Self-portrait with gladioli while Lambert dressed as a Persian prince. It is said that in the self-portraits of Lambert’s British friend and contemporary William Orpen ‘the whole tendency is towards mockery both of himself and of the world’.14 Likewise, in this self-portrait Lambert created a tease, making fun of himself – and, as the poet and author Arthur Adams put it, laughing ‘at all conventions and the mode’.15

In his later portraits Lambert often showed himself

playing a part. We could conclude that he never revealed himself, his inner being; but that would be too hasty. In these images Lambert presented himself as an exuberant, entertaining man with a delightful sense of humour. We need only look at the eyes and the mouth in The official artist 1927 and Self-portrait (unfinished) 1930 to see that Lambert is having fun. He showed himself as a laughing cavalier – fun-loving, but hard-working in a traditional fashion, something most would agree was true of the man.

When Lambert painted or drew his best portraits he

created figures charged with life, even to the point of suggesting the pulsating life under the skin. He sometimes conveyed a woman’s sensuality through the dynamic motive of gesture. In Miss Helen Beauclerk 1914 he invested the subject with an intense self-awareness, her facial muscles taut and alert, and he reminded the viewer of her physicality by showing her putting on gloves and rubbing one hand against another. Likewise, in some of his portraits of men, such as The half-back (Maurice Lambert) 1920, he captured a masculine sense of physical alertness by portraying his subjects with their muscles tensed. In this portrait he used the man’s dark brushed-back hair and the raised collar of his white sweater to emphasise the nape of his neck and to give his subject a powerful and sensuous presence like that of a matinee idol.

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Whereas in drawings such as Light Horse veteran 1925,

Despite his personal rejection of being a genius, he was

he brilliantly modelled the head to capture the texture of

generally acknowledged as such by his contemporaries.

the old man’s skin and his underlying muscle structure, to

Newspaper reporters said that his death ‘will be a tragic

create such a living presence that we almost feel we have

loss to Australian art’, described him as ‘one of the finest

encountered the subject. In all his best portraits Lambert

artists that Australia has produced’, and claimed that ‘never

captured a dynamic body, the kinaesthetic tension of

was there a keener draughtsman than he’.16 The Sydney

the muscles under the skin to evoke a powerful sense of

Morning Herald suggested that ‘no one can estimate to-

physicality. What Lambert did in these portraits is what the

day the immense value of the stimulus which the ideals

best actors do in their performances – they create a sense

of the young Australian school received from his inspiring

of presence, an intensity of being, so that every word,

influence, and the progress which art has made though

every tone and stress is absorbed – and yet almost without

his example’.17

our noticing that it happens.

Australian artists stressed Lambert’s pre-eminence among

Lambert died on 29 May 1930 at the age of fifty-six.

In a special memorial edition of Art in Australia, other

His heart failed while he was repairing his horse’s feed box,

them, and said he was the only one who could boast of

at ‘Windamere’, Cobbity, New South Wales. On his death

an international reputation. George Bell suggested he

he received many verbal tributes, and to make a visual

was ‘the great figure of Australian art’, Hans Heysen that

statement the Art Gallery of New South Wales swathed his

he was ‘a great draughtsman and designer and a very

painting Across the black soil plains 1899 in black drapes.

beautiful colourist with an astounding sense of form’, artonview

George W Lambert The half-back (Maurice Lambert) 1920 oil on canvas 76.2 x 61.0 cm Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide purchased through a South Australian Government Grant in 1958 George W Lambert Miss Helen Beauclerk 1914 oil on canvas 76.5 x 61.0 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased in 1921

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George W Lambert Light Horse veteran 1925 pencil 38.5 x 27.8 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased in 1925

and Daryl Lindsay that he ‘stood for the finest ideals in

The circle has turned and it is time to look again at the art

the contemporary English movement’. In Britain, Kineton

of George Lambert, and to discover afresh the work of one

Parkes described Lambert in the Apollo as ‘a magnificent

of Australia’s most brilliant, witty and fascinating artists.

technician’ and the Connoisseur suggested that he was

gifted with a daring expression and virile technique, and

tribute to one of Australia’s most significant artists who

painted portraits with a dashing approach.19 In 1933 when

created a number of much loved iconic images as well

a selection of more than seventy of Lambert’s works

as portraits of Australian heroes such as Breaker Morant,

were included in an exhibition at the Royal Academy

Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson and artists

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commemorating the work of members who had recently died, British art critic Frank Rinder described Lambert as ‘the virile Australian who had just reached his best when death came’.20

In 1930 Lambert was considered to be Australia’s

greatest painter ever, and much lauded. And then newer, younger artists appeared. For a while Australian art was held in the thrall of William Dobell and Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, and after that by other artists. The Edwardian, wartime and postwar world of Lambert seemed to belong to another people and another time. More recently, however, we have become fascinated with Edwardian lives brought to our screens in films based on the novels of EM Forster, Henry James and Edith

George Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is a

Charles Conder, Thea Proctor, Hugh Ramsay and Arthur Streeton. Seventy-seven years after his death, this major survey – from 1894 to 1930 – shows the diverse range of his work, from his Australian bush subjects to his Edwardian portraits and figure groups, from his sparkling oil sketches painted in Palestine and Gallipoli to his major battle paintings and large sculpture. It includes some 120 paintings, drawings and sculpture from a wide range of public and private collections in Australia and Britain.

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Anne Gray Head of Australian Art The exhibition catalogue is available from the National Gallery of Australia Shop on 62406420.

Further information at nga.gov.au/Lambert

Wharton, nowadays young Australians flock to Gallipoli to discover their heritage, and we want to know more about the years in which Sydney built its Harbour Bridge.

notes 1

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3

4 5

6

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‘The Eternal Quest for Beauty: Society of Artists show’, Sydney Mail, 13 September 1922, p. 10.

George Lambert correspondence with Amy Lambert, 23 October 1921, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/10, p. 369.

‘The Eternal Quest for Beauty: Society of Artists show’, Sydney Mail, 13 September 1922, p. 10.

CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, pp. 26 and 29.

David Fulton, ‘George Lambert at the Front III’, in Arthur Jose, et.al.

The Art of George W. Lambert A. R. A., Sydney: Art in Australia, 1924 (Lambert 1924), p. 30.

M.F. Bruxner, ‘George Lambert at the Front II’, in Lambert 1924, p. 26; David Fulton, ‘George Lambert at the Front III’, in Lambert 1924, p. 30; and CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, p. 29.

George Lambert correspondence with Amy Lambert, 25 November 1921, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/10, p. 383.

Julian Ashton, ‘George Lambert: Painter and sculptor’, Lambert Memorial Number, Art In Australia, series 3, August –September 1930 (Lambert 1930), n.p.

Hans Heysen correspondence with Lionel Lindsay, 18 December 1921, quoted in Colin Thiele, Heysen of Hahndorf, (1968), Adelaide: Rigby, 1976, p. 295.

Arthur Murch, ‘Difficulties’, Undergrowth, Sydney, September–October 1926.

CEW Bean, Gallipoli Mission, (1948), Sydney: ABC, 1990, p. 112; CEW Bean, ‘George Lambert at the Front I’, in Lambert 1924, p. 26.

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13

14

15 16

17 18

19

20

AW Allen, Merioola, correspondence with Amy Lambert, 1 June 1930, Lambert Family Papers, ML MSS 97/11.

George Lambert correspondence with Sadie Cox, 17 June 1928, Lambert Family Archive.

Bruce Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, London: Jonathan Cape, 1981, p. 263.

Arthur Adams, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ in Lambert 1930, n.p.

George Lambert: Death of famous artist – a distinguished career’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 1930, p. 12; Sydney Ure Smith, ‘Obituary: Late G. W. Lambert, A. R .A.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1930, p. 180; Thea Proctor, ‘The Late G. W. Lambert A. R. A.: An appreciation’, The Home, 1 July 1930, p. 21.

‘A great artist’, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 1930.

George Bell, ‘Lambert’s Work’, Lambert 1930, n.p.; Hans Heysen, ‘George Lambert Passes’, Lambert 1930, n.p.; Daryl Lindsay, ‘The Significance of Lambert’s Work’, Lambert 1930, n.p.

Kineton Parkes, ‘George Lambert’, Apollo, London, vol.12, July 1930, pp. 74–75; ‘The Late George W. Lambert, A. R. A, 1873–1930’, Connoisseur, London, vol. 86, July 1930, p. 58.

Frank Rinder, ‘The Royal Academy – A Commemorative Show: Orpen in his brilliance’, Manchester Guardian, 7 January 1933, p. 14. The exhibition also included work by Bertram Mackennal and William Orpen.

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conser vation

After treatment George Lambert The sonnet c. 1907 oil on canvas 113.3 x 177.4 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra John B Pye Bequest 1963

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Restoring Lambert

The Gallery’s paintings conservation department has been examining and preparing works in readiness for the launch of the George W Lambert retrospective in June. For conservators, the chance to work on an exhibition devoted to a single artist presents an ideal opportunity to develop an overview of the condition of the artist’s work, the materials used and the range of techniques employed to create the works.

Lambert has proved to be a fascinating subject. He obviously enjoyed the process of painting and throughout his career immersed himself in the study of the Masters.

We can see the influence of many of them, including Velasquez, Hals, Manet and Whistler, in the varied way in which he applied his paint from fluid, medium-rich washes in backgrounds to bravura flicks and dashes of impasto in draperies and fabrics. He has been portrayed as technically conservative, given the period in which he worked.

Nevertheless, there is a deep pleasure to be gained from the sheer craftsmanship and variety in his works.

It is clear that Lambert’s formal approach, founded on solid study at Julian Ashton’s school and in Paris, has served him well. Generally, his paintings have withstood the test of time. The conservation issues we face stem mostly from the accumulation of dirt on the surface of the works and the natural alteration of organic materials rather than the inherent self-destruction that can affect artists’ work.

The sonnet was painted by Lambert in 1907, using Arthur Streeton, Thea Proctor and Kitty Powell as models in his homage to Manet’s Le dejeuner sur l’herbe and Giorgione’s Fête Champêtre. The sonnet won a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale de Arte, Barcelona, in 1911, but met with a lukewarm response in England. When the painting came into the Gallery’s conservation studio, it had an extremely heavy layer of surface grime and a deeply discoloured varnish. The canvas was also poorly attached to a defective stretcher. We began treatment by repairing the stretcher and reinforcing the tacking margins of the canvas support. The canvas was then re-attached securely and tensioned, ensuring that surface cleaning and varnish removal could be carried out on a well-supported paint layer. The cleaning of years of accumulated surface grime, using a conservation standard detergent, produced a

marked brightening of the surface, but we were amazed to see the dramatic results once varnish removal began.

Beautiful pinks and blues appeared in the sky; Thea Proctor’s sleeves turned white before our eyes and Kitty Powell’s robust suntan paled to an elegant Edwardian alabaster. As Lambert’s paint was revealed it became apparent that problems with The sonnet mainly concerned structural support and neglect. To complete the treatment, a saturating varnish was applied to the surface and small areas of abrasion were subtly retouched.

As well as major loans from public and private collections in Australia and overseas, the exhibition includes all of the paintings by George Lambert in the Gallery’s collection. The sonnet has been treated and The old dress was conserved in 2001. We are now looking forward to examining more closely Portrait group, Weighing the fleece, The empty glass and A garden bunch. a

Before treatment George Lambert The sonnet c. 1907 oil on canvas 113.3 x 177.4 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra John B Pye Bequest 1963

David Wise, Sheridan Roberts and Greg Howard Paintings Conservation

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Orde Poynton and Projec t galleries

VIP: very important photographs 1840s–1940s 26 May –­ 19 August 2007

Bill Brandt East End girl, dancing the Lambeth Walk 1938 gelatin silver photograph 21.2 x 17.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

People are regarded as VIPs for many reasons – for

being brilliant and talented, for being rich and powerful.

tell the history of the medium. The exhibition presents

Some by virtue of hard work and merit, others by notorious

premium examples of the almost bewildering range of

misadventure. In this exhibition, rare and treasured

processes and techniques employed during photography’s

photographs from the national collection take to the red

first century: from the daguerreotypes, salt prints and

carpet to show themselves off in all their glory: it celebrates

cyanotypes of the earliest years, to the wet-plate then

the twenty-fifth anniversary in 2007 of the first displays of photography included in the inaugural exhibitions for the opening of the National Gallery of Australia building in 1982. Like their human equivalents, there is a variety of explanations for why some photographs are celebrated, why some garner such widespread admiration that they achieve iconic status. Needless to say, big and brash or small and dignified, they all have an essential quality that raises them above the ordinary. If they were people, you

A collection of photography in an art gallery has to

dry-plate collodion albumen silver prints with their fine detail that replaced the early processes, through to the graphic quality of the processes employed by the Pictorialists at the turn of the twentieth century – the bromoils and gum bichromates, the carbons and platinums and the supremely high quality photomechanical reproduction – and finally the gelatin silver process that became the mainstay of photography through to the

would say they had charisma.

invention of digital. Early colour processes of the thirties

and forties such as Gasparcolor and dye transfer also make

The ‘A-listers’ are well represented in the exhibition:

Edward Weston, Man Ray, Julia Margaret Cameron,

an appearance. Prohibitively expensive and technically

Bill Brandt, Berenice Abbott, František Drtikol and

sophisticated, they were principally found in the domain

Walker Evans are on show with the images that made them

of advertising and can be seen in the exhibition in work by

famous as well as other images which do not have as high

Anton Bruehl and Paul Outerbridge.

a level of recognition. Also lauded are our own ‘home-

grown’ celebrities – Charles Bayliss, Harold Cazneaux,

Australia began in the early 1970s in tandem with the start

Olive Cotton and Max Dupain, for example. Fame is at

of concerted institutional acquisition of the medium by

best a strange beast: also included are the photographic

art museums around the world. The Victoria and Albert

equivalents of people well known and respected in their field but who have had universal acclaim elude them.

And there is outstanding work from the early years of the medium by the ever-elusive ‘Anonymous’. The exhibition covers all genres of photography – portraiture, landscape, urban photography, social documentary, photojournalism, celebrity work, still life, advertising; photographs as single images but also as found in albums and books; cut up,

Collecting photography at the National Gallery of

Museum had started doing so in 1852 and the Museum of Modern Art in New York set up its photographic department in 1940 – but they were very much the exceptions. In Australia, photography had been acquired by the state and university libraries, though primarily for its documentary value, and by the Art Gallery of South Australia, for example, since the 1920s. However, it was

collaged and hand-coloured, images made with the most

only in 1975 that the big auction houses, Sotheby’s and

advanced cameras of the day to images made without

Christie’s, established photographic departments and the

a camera at all; and from the intimate to Bayliss and

medium took its first steps towards becoming the lucrative

Holtermann’s nine-and-a-half metre long panorama of

part of the art market that it is today with its long list of

Sydney Harbour. Photography, in other words, in all its

celebrity collectors that includes Elton John, Diane Keaton,

wondrous diversity.

Tom Cruise and Madonna.

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Viscountess Frances Jocelyn Circular design c. 1860 albumen silver photograph, watercolour, pencil 28.0 x 23.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra William Henry Fox Talbot The ladder before April 1845 plate XIV from The pencil of nature 1844–46 salted paper print from a calotype paper negative 17.0 x 18.2 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The first formulation of policy in the Gallery’s annual report of 1976–77 stated the aim was to ‘develop a department of photography which will include both Australian and overseas works. The Australian collection will be historically comprehensive, while the collection of overseas photographers will aim to represent the work of the major artists in the history of photography’. Since that statement of intent thirty years ago, the collection has grown to include over 16,000 works. There are approximately sixty per cent Australian to forty per cent international photographs, a ratio that has remained constant over the years. It is one of the largest and finest collections in the region. This exhibition focuses on the first 100 years of photography, a period which saw photography move from its beginnings in the 1840s, expensive and confined to a large degree to the upper classes, to cementing itself by the 1940s as one of the leading art forms of the twentieth century; a ubiquitous one that, with its chameleon nature, technological underpinnings and mechanical reproducibility, seemed best equipped to serve and reflect the modern world.

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Given the strengths and depth of both its Australian and international holdings, the Gallery has the capacity to successfully display Australian photographers alongside their international contemporaries. The interaction between Australia and the rest of the world was, if not as immediate during the first 100 years of the medium as in the contemporary global world of internet communication, then certainly as lively. The Australian scene was enriched by the arrival of photographers from across the world coming to settle or visit, and photographs and publications travelled between the two worlds on both private and professional missions.

Having Australian photographers and those from Europe and America together in this exhibition allows for rewarding dialogues between works: it is fascinating to compare what happened on the colonial ‘periphery’ with what happened at the ‘centre’ of cultural production, regional interpretations sometimes displaying a greater level of freedom and innovation. Photographs from the 1930s by Max Dupain are seen, for example, next to the Surrealist-inspired works of Man Ray that so influenced them; the Pictorialist works of Harold Cazneaux next to Heinrich Kühn. It is the first time at the Gallery that Australian and international works have been hung together in this way.

In any discussion of what makes a photograph special, it is well to keep in mind the American landscape photographer Ansel Adams’s observation that ‘there are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs’. When people think of a classic, ‘good’ photograph they most likely reference the sort of photography practised by Adams – usually black-and-white and a beautiful print, pristine and rarified. But great works can also take on somewhat more anarchic characteristics.

Viscountess Frances Jocelyn was a lady-in-waiting to

Queen Victoria, a great enthusiast who encouraged Jocelyn to take up photography. Like others from her set, she cut up her own photographs and those taken by others, arranged them into new narratives and decorative patterns, painted on and around them and made a hybrid album incorporating elements of a lady’s sketchbook. Her album is witty and irreverent. It is also a telling and perceptive critique of the aristocratic Victorian society in which she lived – one in which England created a vast empire through its naval power, one in which everyone had their place and responsibilities that could not be shirked.

Any attempt at compiling a checklist of stylistic musthaves is always going to run aground coming up with a definition of magic and appeal that speaks to everyone.

Walking through an exhibition it is easy enough to observe that an image that ‘speaks’ profoundly to one person will leave another yawning and unmoved. Having said that …

Photography is so much about subject matter and it is overtly true that to some extent making a good photograph is simply about being in the right place at the right time and knowing – either intuitively or through years of experience and probably both – the best place to stand and the right moment to click the shutter. The ability to do this is an essential skill for all great photographers but particularly obvious perhaps in those practising street photography and photo reportage who go out into the world to find their picture: represented in the show with images by Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose term ‘the decisive moment’ has become a famous attempt to define this mastery, as well as works by German-born British photographer Bill Brandt and Americans Walker Evans and Helen Levitt among others.

Events caught by the photographic eye in this way can be ones that change the course of world history or – as often as not – something that passes totally unnoticed by those not possessing the heightened observational intent of the photographer. The camera’s ability to transform the mundane into something poetic is one of its most extraordinary characteristics and one that is present strongly and majestically from its very earliest beginnings.

Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot was one of its inventors and a great master in regard to this power to remake the world around him into one of enigma and heightened, almost mystical, significance. Talbot took the simple things that surrounded him in his rural country life – a piece of lace, a leaf, bonnets, glasses from a cabinet, the china off the sideboard – arranged them in front of the camera and through this reordering and visionary flair transformed them into photographs that continue to fascinate and give rise to debate as to their meaning.

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Harold Cazneaux The orphan sisters c. 1906 gelatin silver photograph 39.5 x 31.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of the Cazneaux family 1981 František Drtikol Draped figure behind seated nude c. 1928 gelatin silver photograph 26.5 x 22.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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The Gallery is fortunate to have one of the few

opened Melbourne’s first commercial photographic studio

remaining complete copies of The pencil of nature, the first

in 1847. Along with five other surviving dageurreotypes

commercially available book with photographic illustration.

made by Kilburn, it is the first photographic record made

It was published in six parts between 1844 and 1846 to

of Australia’s Indigenous people and the earliest Australian

publicise Talbot’s discoveries – and in a spirit of defiance

image in the collection. The subjects of this photograph

and counterclaim to Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s 1839

have such appeal because of the way they live again in the

claim in Paris of being the first to capture successfully and

image as intensely as when their images were captured on

permanently the imprint of the world onto a surface (in

this polished silver iodide-coated copperplate 160 years

Daguerre’s case onto a piece of sensitised copper). There is

ago. And they in turn seem to be aware of us. Present

a wonder that comes with reflecting on the sheer survival

and past collide.

of works by the pioneers of the medium – and more so

in that they are sometimes in extraordinarily good and

are embedded in photographs gives them huge

sparkling condition. Talbot’s salt prints are a treasured part

talismanic power. Recording what something looks like,

of the collection as are the cyanotypes of plants made

through historic, ethnographic, proprietorial impulse,

in the 1840s by Anna Atkins and the small but always

will always be a strong raison d’être of the medium.

affecting group of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes –

Such considerations are important for the curator of

one-off images that in their protective cases often have a

photography but as important are the qualities of the

jewel-like character.

particular print, considerations that address the technical

and aesthetic qualities of the object itself, including such

One of the qualities unique to the medium

That it feels as if physical traces of their subject

– unmistakably present wherever it was made and

concerns as how it fits into the photographer’s oeuvre,

discernible from the very first time a sliver of time was

into the collection, and more broadly into the history of

fixed through the alchemy of chemistry and light – is its

photography as well as its cultural significance. These

potent and unbreakable relationship to the real. Startlingly

aspects of the work are indivisible and of equal importance

strong and unmediated, for example, is the presence of a

in acquiring work for an art museum collection.

group of Aboriginal people in a daguerreotype made by

the English-born photographer Douglas T Kilburn, who

and the same applies to the world of photography – more

Anton Bruehl Porgy and Bess 1942 Gasparcolor colour photograph 32.3 x 26.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra NGA Photography Fund: Farrell Family Foundation donation 2000 Doris Ulmann Woman and two children in doorway 1929–31 platinum print 20.6 x 15.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (opposite) Max Dupain Brave new world 1935 gelatin silver photograph 46.3 x 35.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Rarity is always a factor in making something special

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Albert Renger-Patzsch Railroad bridge c. 1927 gelatin silver photograph 16.8 x 22.8 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

so in fact given the reproducibility of photographs.

Editioning of prints has only come into vogue in recent years to meet the demands of a market. With older material it is difficult to ascertain how many copies of a particular print exist but as there was little market for photographic prints as art works, huge print runs were uncommon. There are photographers such as Tina Modotti, who worked with Edward Weston in Mexico in the mid to late 1920s. She was not a prolific printer and her life was cut short – to have works by Modotti and others like her is always special and they attract high prices at auction (the Gallery has four fine Modotti prints).

Images by Henri Cartier-Bresson have been common enough in later prints but vintage prints are extremely rare. The Gallery is fortunate to have a vintage print of his made in Mexico in 1934 that looks startlingly different to the graphic high-contrast prints for which he is known.

Circumstances can also change, affecting the desiribility of an artist’s work. Following Cartier-Bresson’s death in 2004, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation prohibited any further printing from his negatives. As a result, the value of Cartier-Bresson prints has risen sharply and will continue to do so.

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Having a sizeable body of work that can tell the story of a photographer’s career is indispensable in a collection, allowing for serious research and proper understanding of where a particular print fits into the big picture. As part of the desired outcome of the acquisition policy, this is especially important in the area of Australian photography – comprehensive collections of work by John Kauffmann, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain and Australian-born expatriates such as Anton Bruehl who worked in America, for example, are held with representative works included in the exhibition.

Adding to the prestige of a collection are groups of work relating to a particular project engaged in by a photographer and this area is a distinct and spectacular strength of the holdings: Lewis Hine’s documentation of child labour made for the National Child Labor Committee from 1908 to 1924, work which was instrumental in reforms being implemented; more than sixty platinum photographs by Doris Ulmann from 1929–31 of the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia as well as the limited edition book Roll, Jordan, Roll with fine photogravure illustrations; more than 120 images by the early modernist photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, many of which

were included in his highly influential book, Die Welt ist

printed by Parasol Press nonetheless. Ansel Adams’s late

schön [The world is beautiful] of 1928; EO Hoppé’s rare

portfolios, including the Museum set, are also highly prized

photographs of German industry taken for the 1930 book

and of the highest quality, as is Edward Weston’s Fiftieth

Deutsche Arbeit [German work] on the wonders of modern

Anniversary Portfolio 1902–1952 printed by his son Brett

German engineering and manufacturing plants. These

under Weston’s supervision. These portfolios of Adams and

groups of works contribute to make the Gallery’s collection

Weston were made at the end of their careers and exist as

truly one of world standing.

moving testimonials: two master photographers looking

back at a life devoted to photography and making an

It is preferable to acquire vintage prints made by

the artist in the years close to the exposure date of

eloquent final statement on what was important.

the negative. Photographic papers change enormously

over time, negatives degenerate and are damaged and

strongly the hand of the photographer also lift them above

photographers also print differently – each period has its

the ordinary. For example, the backs of photographs

own printing ‘style’ (even a great image may not find a

by Felix Man in the collection are covered with stickers

place in an art gallery if only a soulless print is available for

and annotations, providing an insight into the world

acquisition). As always there are exceptions to this or

of the photographer; The steerage of 1907 by Alfred

that is to say cases where later prints have their own

Stieglitz is made (if possible) even more wonderful by

special quality. The Gallery, for instance, has portfolios

the long handwritten inscription to his friend and fellow

made in the late 1970s of images that were created

photographer Paul B Haviland which accompanies it; the

by Berenice Abbott in the 1930s for her project

inscription by the American high fashion photographer

Changing New York, one of the greatest ‘portraits’ of

Baron George Hoyningen-Huene to Max Dupain – while

a city ever compiled. They look very different to the

on a short visit to Sydney in 1937 – on a portrait of Dupain,

prints made at the time the images were shot, which

Max after surfing, made by Olive Cotton, makes it unique

are characteristically warmer in tone, but are exquisitely

and special.

Carleton E Watkins Willamette Falls, Oregon City 1867 albumen silver photograph 39.2 x 52.1 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra NGA Photography Fund: Farrell Family Foundation donation 2000

Photographs carrying a particular history or showing

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It has been noted that sometimes photographs are like windows, seemingly straightforward depictions of the world, the camera almost a scientific instrument of objectivity. Other times photographs are more like mirrors reflecting back the photographer. And, of course, photography must also work at revealing ourselves to ourselves. Ansel Adams noted that ‘a photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into’. This exhibition asks the viewer to engage with photographs in all their complexity and diversity: to be charmed by the ‘stars’ certainly but also to enjoy spending time with lesser known but equally talented participants.

Great photography is always about exploring different ways of looking at the world – and shifting, even if only slightly, our perception of that world in some way. As we enter the digital age the rules are changing. The value of photography, whatever technology it employs, remains in teaching us how to see and interpret our own world with clarity, to stimulate our minds and evoke our emotions. a Anne O’Hehir Curator, Photography Further information at nga.gov.au/VIP

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Ansel Adams Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico 1941 gelatin silver photograph printed 1980 38.6 x 49.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (opposite) Alfred Stieglitz The steerage 1907 photogravure on Japanese vellum printed 1915 33.4 x 26.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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asian ar t galleries

The Southeast Asian Gallery

Entering the Southeast Asian Gallery with the Bronze Weaver in the foreground, and a Sumba textile and pairs of guardian figures from the Philippines and West Iran behind

The new Southeast Asian Gallery opened in late October 2006 with a special launch of the newest and most exciting acquisition from the region – the sixth-century Bronze Weaver from Indonesia (see artonview, no. 49, page 36).

Placed at the entrance to the new permanent displays of Southeast Asian art, the sculpture highlights the Gallery’s commitment to showing the most ancient and enduring art forms from the region, including those associated with animist and ancestral beliefs which long predate the arrival of world religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.

Like all South and Southeast Asian art in the national collection, the ancestral art is comprised largely of sculpture and textiles. Their integrated display, made possible by the Gallery’s new lighting system which allows works of stone and wood to be located beside light-sensitive fabrics, visually reinforces a fundamental feature of ancient Southeast Asian cultures – the essential complementary of male and female elements. This is most clearly evident in the textiles created by women, and the wooden sculptures and smelted bronzes which are men’s arts. A number of the works on display actually combine these dual elements: a pair of male and female bulol rice guardians from the northern Philippines stands beside a set of male and female cloths from Sumba in eastern Indonesia. The ceremonial textiles, which form the female gift in the elaborate exchanges that accompany marriage and funerals, feature male skull tree motifs associated with the prestigious masculine ritual of headhunting.

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Among the recurring images in this section of the Southeast Asian installations are those associated with the dark underworld realm, often viewed as female. In particular, reptiles such as crocodiles, snakes and mythical naga serpents are found on works in all media. A large receptacle made from buffalo horn was created in the form of a serpent to hold the magical potions of the village shaman in northern Sumatra. The ship symbol found on the striking woven hangings used in rites of passage in south Sumatra often takes the form of a dragon boat.

Motifs of birds associated with the upper realm of the gods and the deified ancestors are also evident in this part of the permanent display, with striking wooden sculptures of birds exhibited from the mountainous regions of north Vietnam, the Lampung region of southern Sumatra and as far afield as Madagascar where, in the distant past, the ancestors of modern Indonesians arrived after long sea voyages which also took them into remote parts of the Pacific Ocean. The similarities in style between quite remote parts of Southeast Asia speak of that shared linguistic and cultural heritage. Also recurring in Southeast Asian arts are tree motifs, a popular symbol of the axis mundi that the ancestors travel down to join the middle world of the living. One of the most prominent works with this motif is found in the last section of the Southeast Asian Gallery – the textile from Central Sulawesi was intended for display at rites associated with fertility when the founding ancestors of clan and village are dutifully honoured by their descendants.

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Better known are the Southeast Asian arts, especially sculpture, influenced by India. The great architectural wonders of Angkor and Borobodur, and the enduring vitality of Buddhism for Thailand and Burma, and Hinduism for Bali, reveal the impact of religious and court rituals adopted from South Asia in the first millennium of the current era. The interaction of Indian ideas and imagery with pre-existing local traditions has resulted in regional art forms distinct from India yet revealing common affinities across the Southeast Asian region.

Following on from the Indian Gallery, located directly adjacent to the new Southeast Asian permanent exhibition, the visitor catches a first glimpse of Southeast Asian art through the white marble arcade that has been erected in the Islamic section of the South Asian displays. The reassembling of Mughal-period architectural feature, from the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb, was a major undertaking for the Gallery’s exhibition staff, assisted by

local stonemasons. The purchase of the arcade has been generously supported by artist Margaret Olley, who also assisted with the acquisition of the huge Indian brackets and lintels which mark the entrance from the foyer to the Asian Galleries.

Through the arches are some of the Gallery’s most important Buddhist sculptures from Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. Several Thai bronze sculptures are covered in lacquer and gold leaf and reveal aspects of the narrative of the life of the earthly Buddha Shakyamuni popular throughout mainland Southeast Asia. While many images allude to the moment of enlightenment when he reaches down to touch the Earth, calling it to witness his lifetime of good deeds, one striking sculpture shows the Buddha seated in the forest where he had retreated from a quarrel among his followers. Before him are the tiny figures of the elephant and the monkey offering him a water pot and honeycomb respectively. artonview

A Burmese wooden Buddha with Hindu Balinese textiles and pages from a Thai manuscript on the adjacent wall (opposite) Looking through the Mughal Indian marble arch at Thai and Burmese Buddhist sculpture

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On the wall behind, the designs on the textiles are drawn from another enduring aspect of Indian culture, the importance of the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in mainland and insular Southeast Asia.

The Indonesian renditions of the tales, however, are sometimes quite obscure, alluding to stories and dramatic scenes unknown or not prominent in India. However, the flat two-dimensional wayang form, a key feature of the figures in the epics, is shared by Hindu Bali and Islamic Java, appearing on batik, weavings, embroidery, painted panels and even decorating a container for storing spurs for fighting cocks.

While many of the sculptures are large and imposing, and able to be displayed without the barrier of glass panels, other works shown in showcases are small and exquisite. In particular a number of small gold and silver objects display the gamut of the region’s cultural orientations. A gold mask from Tanimbar provides protection in an animist rite. While the hilt of splendid jewel-studded Balinese dagger takes the form of a demon, another from a nearby Islamic kingdom reveals a stylised human form. One intricate box in the form of a crab blends Malay and Chinese elements in a decorative form popular on both sides of the Straits of Malacca.

The existing collections of Southeast Asian art have been supplemented by a number of recent acquisitions, allowing the Gallery to present a more complex and comprehensive history of the arts of the region. For example, juxtaposed with the Mughal arch, sumptuous gold brocades from the Gallery’s famous textile collection are displayed beside a stone panel inscribed with Arabic calligraphy. The recently acquired sculpture was a key work in the 2006 exhibition, Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia. Hanging beside the textiles, the group speaks of the pervasive and decorative nature of art of Islamic communities in the region, often overshadowed by the exuberant and better known art of the Balinese village and Javanese court.

The Southeast Asian Gallery reveals the richness and diversity of the arts of the regions of Asia closest to Australia. The displays allow the visitor to enjoy the great diversity of form, cultural origins, media, and technique, while appreciating the commonalties displayed in the arts of Southeast Asian cultures whose shared histories stretch back thousands of years. a

Sumatran textiles featuring the popular ship motif flanked by an image of a Khmer goddess and a wooden bird sculpture from Vietnam (opposite) An image of the Hindu god Shiva from Cambodia, with a Javanese and Balinese textile featuring Hindu designs, and a showcase containing a group of small Southeast Asian Hindu-Buddhist sculptures Gilded Thai figures of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the foreground, and an Indonesian stone panel displaying Islamic calligraphy beside royal Malay gold and silk textiles on the rear wall. A section of the Indian Gallery is visible through the arches

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

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for thcoming exhibition

Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 13 October 2007 ­– 10 February 2008

Anniebell Marrngamarrnga Kuninjku people Yalk Yalk mother and babies 2006 natural pigments dyed on woven pandanus 285.0 x 172.0 cm

The inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial

curator is Brenda L Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and

will be held at the Gallery in Canberra later this year.

Torres Strait Islander Art, National Gallery of Australia. The

Presenting the work of thirty artists from each state and

guest curator position provides an outstanding opportunity

territory, the Triennial demonstrates the incredible range

for Indigenous curators to develop skills and direct a major

of contemporary Indigenous art practice. It is the largest

Australian art event. The Gallery plans to extend the scope

survey show of Indigenous art at the Gallery in more

of this project to include international Indigenous curators

than fifteen years, featuring up to four works by each

from the Pacific and other regions. A substantial, fully-

artist created during the past three years in a variety of

illustrated publication will also accompany each triennial

media, including painting on bark and canvas, sculpture,

exhibition and provide an ongoing authoritative critical

textiles, weaving, new media, photomedia, printmaking

reference for contemporary Indigenous art in Australia.

and installation. The works selected not only create an

exhibition of outstanding quality but are also ultimately

art triennial is also in light of there being fewer

important acquisitions for the national collection.

high-profile opportunities to showcase Australia’s

leading contemporary artists, especially considering

Internationally, there has been incredible interest in

The Gallery’s development of an Indigenous

contemporary Indigenous art from Australia, most notably

that some major forces in contemporary art such as the

with the prestigious Australian Indigenous Art Commission

Moët et Chandon Fellowship and the Art Gallery of

at the new Musée du quai Branly, Paris, in June 2006.

New South Wales’s biennial, Australian Perspecta, have

And there can be no doubt that locally the launch of the

ceased. To date, the most widely acknowledged survey

Triennial is well-timed. Not only does it open the day after

of contemporary Indigenous Australian art has been the

the Gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary, it also coincides

highly popular annual Telstra National Aboriginal and

with the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum

Torres Strait Islander Art Award, held each August at the

(Aboriginals), whereby non-Indigenous Australians

Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.

(90.77%) voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous

Although it is not a theme-based or curated show, the

Australians on the census as citizens, and the fiftieth

Telstra Award features the work of more than 100 artists.

anniversary of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander

What defines the National Indigenous Art Triennial is that it

Day Observance Committee). These anniversaries are a

is curated, themed, and by invitation; therefore it stands as

major inspiration for the exhibition’s thematic context.

an important counterpoint to existing annual, biennial and

To ensure that successive National Indigenous Art

triennial visual arts events.

a

Triennials are as dynamic and as stimulating as possible the Gallery will invite an Indigenous guest curator to direct the exhibition’s theme and content. The theme of the inaugural Triennial is Culture Warriors and this year’s guest

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Brenda L Croft Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Major sponsor BHP Billiton

new acquisition Australian Paintings

Kathleen O’Connor In the studio

Kathleen O’Connor In the studio c. 1928 tempera on card 71.8 x 86.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kathleen O’Connor is a Western Australian artist of

then applied the paint thinly, using large flat blocks of

national status. Like many other Australian artists of the

colour, leaving areas of the card exposed so as to give

Edwardian era, she was an artist in exile, travelling abroad

added warmth to the overall effect. The work is energised

in 1906 and remaining overseas to study and work for

by the patterned tablecloth, the folds in the blue fabric

almost fifty years. Many Australian artists gravitated to

backdrop and the vigorous flecks of green, red and white

London but O’Connor, like fellow Australians Rupert Bunny

paint that create the flowers in the pot. There is a sense of

and Phillips Fox, mostly lived and worked in Paris.

distortion in the way the space has been flattened, and the

tabletop tilted in a modernist fashion.

For a period O’Connor was an objective recorder of

Parisian life, painting images of girls in cafés or intimate

views of women in the Luxembourg Gardens – nannies

objects from her personal life scattered on the table,

with prams and women reading. Following a brief period in

creating the impression that she has just walked out of the

Australia in 1926, when she painted decorative objects for Grace Bros and David Jones in Sydney, she turned to still life, to the world of her studio, painting images such as In the studio c. 1928.

In doing so she was taking up a modernist subject,

which allowed her to focus on formal arrangement, on design and colour. In the still life In the studio she explored the possibilities of flat patterning and intense colours to construct her image. She drew the image in outline and

36 national gallery of australia

It is a deeply personal image, a lived-in still life, with

room where she had been drinking a cup of coffee and scanning through the well-thumbed magazine.

At around the time O’Connor painted this work she

received a favourable review in Les Artistes d’Aujourd-hui: ‘She is an incomparable colourist, as witness her still lifes, which are magnificent mosaics, in which all the colours vibrate and sing’.

Anne Gray Head of Australian Art

new acquisition Australian Painting and Sculpture

Ray Crooke ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island

I find a strange island sometimes where ghosts

extensively throughout Far North Queensland and the

of ancient glories linger, where the winds and

Pacific. During his first stay on Thursday Island soldiers

the flowers are sweet and the people are still

were billeted in the abandoned Federal Hotel, which

gentle and smiling, where man is conscious of his

was built around 1903. The building is identifiable in

grandeur and is content to live simply in harmony with the forces around and within him. Yet if we found this island we would destroy it in a month.

(Ray Crooke, 1949 journal entry) ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island 1950 is a work that marks the beginning of Ray Crooke’s longstanding interest in painting the people and landscapes of Far North Queensland and the Pacific. The work was made in Melbourne after

‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island by its arched verandah and red roof.

Australia’s northern-most settlement, Thursday Island,

has a long history of exchange and contact with Asian and Melanesian peoples, and the first European contact dates from early in the seventeenth century. Crooke’s writings and works of art display his keen interest in the history of

Crooke’s 1949 visit to the Torres Strait where he lived for

the region and his awareness of the fine balance for the

several months on Thursday Island (Waiben) working as

Indigenous people between their traditional ways of life

a cook, labourer and trochus diver. Lugger sailing vessels

and introduced elements of western medicine, religion

such as the one depicted in this painting were used by

and industry.

the fishermen to explore the waters of the Darnley Deeps.

During his time in the region, Crooke travelled around the Great Barrier Reef visiting a number of islands, making many drawings, and keeping a journal.

Crooke first visited the Torres Strait and Thursday Island

in 1943 as a soldier with the Australian Army. The artist had enlisted in 1940 and throughout the war travelled

Ray Crooke ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island 1950 egg tempera and oil on composition board 25.0 x 35.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2006

Beatrice Gralton Associate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture ‘Kingfisher’ Thursday Island is included in the forthcoming National Gallery of Australia travelling exhibition Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 which opens at Tamworth Regional Gallery on 3 August 2007. artonview

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new acquisition Australian Print s and Drawings

Kenneth Macqueen Darling Downs landscape

Kenneth Macqueen Darling Downs landscape c. 1935 watercolour on paper 35.0 x 45.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

There is a group of photographs in the National Gallery

maintained an association with them throughout his entire

of Australia’s Research Library taken around the property

life. He was also a member of the Society of Artists and

where Kenneth Macqueen lived from 1922 until his death

his first exhibition was with them in 1922. Macqueen

in 1960. The images are immediately familiar for they are

exhibited almost every year from 1922, and by 1926 was

the landscape of Macqueen’s watercolours, with the same

receiving somewhat backhanded praise for his work. In a

patterns of rhythmic rolling hills and endless flat-bottomed

review of the Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition in the

clouds. It is the landscape he painted over and over again,

Bulletin of 16 September 1926, came the somewhat wry

from the time when he and his brother Jack purchased

comment that ‘Kenneth Macqueen takes a queer view of

their farm atop a ridge at Mount Emlyn, Millmerran, on

the earth’s surface; he succeeds in being extraordinary

Queensland’s Darling Downs.

anyway’. By 1935 an article in Art in Australia (May 15)

offered more refined praise: ‘Mr Macqueen’s work is

Only a few years before, Macqueen had returned from

England where he had served in the AIF during the First

completely individual … every picture is alive with tender

World War. After the war he studied art in London under

serenity and charm’.

Bernard Meninsky at the Westminster School of Art and

with Henry Tonks at the Slade School. His spare time was

this time, when Macqueen’s landscapes had reached

spent at the National Gallery or the Victoria and Albert

a stylistic maturity. It is typically painted in flat areas

Museum, taking in the nuances of the watercolours of

of colour, with sweeping rhythms. Fascinated with the

Turner, Constable and especially the tonal landscapes of John Sell Cotman.

Back in Australia Macqueen balanced his days

between farming and painting, often preferring to sketch en plein air during the day (rather than use photographs for they provided too much detail) and paint in the cool of the evening when the conditions were more suitable for the intricacies of watercolour painting. In his 1948 book Adventure in watercolour, Macqueen explained: ‘A watercolour can be left, however much one hates to do so, to be continued in the next lull. Then again watercolour is such a delightful medium, full of the unexpected, with its transparency giving one an extra stop on which to play’.

Watercolour became his preferred medium and

Macqueen was a master of the technique. An early member of the Australian Watercolour Institute, he

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The watercolour Darling Downs was painted around

element of design in landscape, Macqueen wrote in 1948: ‘Design in landscape interests me tremendously though involuntarily. When a subject strikes me, and quickens my interest, I find it is nearly always a shape of a tree, hill or cloud that has been the cause’. Here the eye is drawn to the dark swathe of hillside in the middle ground and the recently tilled rich dark soil, typical of the Darling Downs.

It is a bold and unexpected feature, which Macqueen balances with the sweep of a winding road and its border of repeating fence posts. The Twin Hills in the background are moulded in shape and form by cloud shadows. The azure blue of the sky, the touches of blue in the dams and the tiny patch of blue on the box culvert in the foreground all work seamlessly to create this wonderful composition.

Anne McDonald Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

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new acquisition Australian Print s and Drawings

Kate Lohse Tools of the trade

Kate Lohse A man midwife 2003 from Tools of the trade thermal transfer on linen handkerchief 25.0 x 24.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2007

In Tools of the trade, New South Wales-based artist

viewed as a medical problem. The role of the female birth

and midwife Kate Lohse explores ‘the historical

attendant was usurped by the male midwife, who emerged

struggle between midwives and medical men for

from the trade guild of the barber-surgeons and pushed

the control of childbirth’. In her series of twenty-one

his way confidently into the bedchambers of middle-

printed handkerchiefs, images of traditional midwifery

class women. Childbirth became a potentially lucrative

paraphernalia including ointments, salves and the birth

occasion with the male midwife charging heavily for his

stool are juxtaposed with seventeenth-century engravings

knowledge of anatomy, gained through study in male-

of coldly glittering surgical instruments and anatomical

only academic circles, and flourishing the newly invented

diagrams of the pregnant female. These images were

maternity forceps. The female midwife became the target

sourced from scientific journals in the Wellcome Library in

of fear mongering, with her intuition and experience

London, digitally manipulated and thermally transferred onto the starched white cloth squares. Fine linen was chosen to refer to the ‘churching of women’ after childbirth (a purification ritual in which the new mother makes an offering of linen to the priest) and what Lohse pointedly refers to as the impositions made upon the ‘blank canvas’ of a woman’s pregnant body.

During the age of scientific enquiry, the concept of the

body as machine was invented, and childbirth began to be 40 national gallery of australia

overshadowed by the portrayal of her methods as ignorant and unhygienic.

In this timely series, Lohse has illustrated the shift of

childbirth from the female community into the medical domain. The artist draws on her experience as a midwife to imbue this thought-provoking work with a personal awareness of the troubled history of midwifery.

Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax Gordon Darling Intern, Australian Prints and Drawings

new acquisition Australian Print s and Drawings

The Omie barkcloths

I paint on the barkcloth the designs that were on my grandparents’ bodies. Then we all remember and our customs will not be forgotten.

(Nerry Keme) Nerry Keme is one of four Omie artists who have produced this group of barkcloths, or nyog’e, from the Omie region of eastern Papua New Guinea. (Drusilla Modjeska and David Baker brought attention to the work of this group in their research for an exhibition at Annandale Galleries in 2006.) Aspesa Gadai, Nerry Keme, Stella Upia and Dapeni Jonevari are important artists of the Omie: the women referred to as the duvahe, or main producers, of the nyog’e. Each nyog’e, once worn or hung during ceremony, is a single sheet of inner-bark, dried in the sun and beaten flat to nearly twice its original size. The black outlines are applied with charcoal and then painted with dyes from the roots of plants.

The Omie visual language embraces a range of motifs.

Designs include those based on traditional tattooing practices now no longer practised; curling plant-like formations evocative of the flora of the surrounding forest and traditional Omie weaving techniques. While much of this appears abstract, the names of specific cloths associate them with particular plants and animals.

In Vinohu’e – a body design by Aspesa Gadai, the hooked tendrils of vinohu’e vine can be seen. The designs featured in the more formally structured barkcloth by Stella Upia entitled Sihau’e – a Sahote clan design reflect

Stella Upia Sihau’e – a Sahote clan design inner bark, charcoal and plants dyes 123.0 x 104.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

the grid weave of the narrow fibrous belts that comprise the customary attire of Omie huntsmen.

While these designs are rooted in the ancestral

past of the Omie, barkcloth production represents a living tradition that has evolved to reflect the changing circumstances of the region. What was once used locally for ceremonial purposes now helps sustain the Omie economically and provides a means for promoting their culture to a wider audience.

Mary-Lou Nugent Curatorial Assistant Australian Prints and Drawings

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new acquisition A sian Ar t

Christ crucified Indian Christian sculpture

Much of the historical art of South Asia was created for religious purposes. While the Gallery has an important collection of Hindu, Jain and early Buddhist objects from India, the art of well-established, albeit smaller, Christian communities has not, until now, been represented.

Generally overlooked by international museums and standard art histories of the region, Christianity has been an important inspiration for arts in India for many centuries, as this fine sculpture attests.

Catholic missionaries began making some inroads into

India during the sixteenth century, following the opening of the sea route from Europe heralded by Vasco da Gama’s path-breaking voyage. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were the first orders to begin the venture. The Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast felt the fullest impact of this missionary drive. The art of Goa from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries reflects the strong impact of Christianity in this region. Located on the active trade route between India and Africa, ivory was commonly used in Goa for religious sculpture, especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these objects were exported to Spain and Portugal.

This is an exceptionally large and spectacular image

of Christ crucified, created in Portuguese Goa during the eighteenth century. While the inspiration is clearly European, features such as the pierced roundels, which form the edging of the loincloth wrapped around Christ’s hips, appear to be peculiar to Indian crucifix images. The articulation of the textured hair, ribs and the veins on Jesus’ head, body and limbs is finely detailed. The stigmata are marked with holes that pierce completely through the ivory, indicating that this icon would have originally been affixed to a large cross. The sculpture has been formed Christ crucified Goa, India 18th century ivory 71 cm (h) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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from four pieces, with the arms and gathered end of loincloth to the left of Christ’s body each carved separately.

Robyn Maxwell Senior Curator, Asian Art

new acquisition A sian Ar t

Gandharan region Head of a bodhisattva

This is a fine example of the Buddhist art of Gandhara, a region that encompassed parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India during the Kushan period from the first century BCE until 320. Located on the Silk Road trade route, Gandhara was an important centre for the development of a new tradition of Buddhist iconography which employed anthropomorphic depictions instead of symbolic representations of the Buddha.

Carved from local grey schist, this head was once

part of a monumental statue depicting a bodhisattva, a compassionate being who has chosen to defer enlightenment in order to help other earthly beings break the cycle of rebirth. Bodhisattvas are often depicted as royalty to emphasise their high status. This bodhisattva wears a bejewelled turban which symbolises material and spiritual wealth and reminds worshippers that their saviour is still of this world. Another feature of the developing Buddhist iconography is the small indentation for a precious jewel between the brows that marks the urna, a small mole that is one of the thirty-two marks of a great being.

Gandharan art is distinguished by its fusion of Greek,

Bactrian and Indian styles, a result of trade as well as the foreign occupation of the region before Kushan rule.

The strong naturalistic facial features and wavy hair are a reflection of Hellenistic naturalism. The depiction of griffinlike beasts shows a debt to traditional Near Eastern and Indian imagery.

An important addition to the Gallery’s collection of

early Buddhist art, the Head of a bodhisattva complements other examples of Gandharan art in the Indian Gallery, including a large figure of a standing bodhisattva, and a

Head of a bodhisattva Gandharan region, Afghanistan or Pakistan Kushan period 3rd–4th century schist stone 53.4 x 44.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

panel from a stupa depicting a jataka story from a previous life of the Buddha.

Niki van den Heuvel Intern, Asian Art

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new acquisition A sian Ar t

Phulkari shawls

Ceremonial cover or woman’s headcovering Punjab region Indian or Pakistan early 20th century cotton, floss silk 134.5 x 223.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Claudia Hyles, 2006

A recent gift of fifteen fine examples of large phulkari shawls expands the Gallery’s collection of Indian textiles produced for domestic consumption. The embroidered phulkari textiles (phul: flowers; kari: work) represent an important aspect of South Asian textile art from the Punjab and neighbouring areas in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent. The phulkari appears to have developed in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The textiles are worn by Muslim, Hindu and especially Sikh women as head coverings and shawls and are also used as ceremonial hangings and covers at festivals and religious and life-cycle rituals.

Shawls embroidered with dense designs in floss silks are the most prestigious type and play a prominent role at weddings. They are considered auspicious and an appropriate gift from the groom’s family to his new bride.

As dowry, phulkari also symbolise the wealth of the bride and her family.

44 national gallery of australia

Although the primary techniques used to create the phulkari are the surface-darning stitch and the herringbone stitch, embroidery styles vary between the different regions within the Punjab, resulting in the textiles acting as a marker of regional identity. While the luminous shimmering silks in brilliant colours against bold plain cotton grounds are common to all fine phulkari, the designs of the eastern Punjab textiles are mainly floral and figural on a fairly coarse cotton cloth base; those of the western Punjab are dominated by technically sophisticated geometric patterning.

The donor, Claudia Hyles, has had a long association with India and the National Gallery of Australia. She has travelled to the Subcontinent regularly for four decades and was an early and long-serving member of the Gallery’s voluntary guides. More recently, she worked for the Gallery as a member of the Office of the Executive.

Robyn Maxwell, Senior Curator, Asian Art Hwei-Fe’n Cheah, Assistant Curator, Asian Art

new acquisition Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ar t

Jack Bell Moon sisters

In the old days people used a powder, made by crushing the roots of a certain tree. This powder was placed in lagoons and waterways to stun the fish, which would then float to the surface and be scooped up. This technique made fishing very easy.

This one time, too much powder was placed in the water which left hardly any fish left. All this time the spirit man from the moon had been watching. He wanted a wife so he descended down to the lagoon where he turned himself into a barramundi. Everyone was trying to catch this fish but he was very tricky and would sink down to the bottom where no one could see him. All the men and women tried and no one could catch him. The man from the moon which was disguised as a barramundi had his eye on the two prettiest women, two sisters. One day the two sisters went for a swim in the lagoon, one by one they swam out into the lagoon, where the barramundi waited and hid. When the last sister swam out, the barramundi caught the two sisters and took them into the sky, back to the moon.

(Artist statement, 2006)

Jack Bell was born in 1950 at Aurukun, a small remote

Aboriginal community located in the Western Cape York region of Far North Queensland. His language group is Wik Mungkan and his clan group is Apalech. His totems are the Dingo, Brolga and Ghost man.

Bell has been a practising artist for many years with

a major role in teaching the younger people Wik culture

Jack Bell Wik Mungkan people Moon sisters 2005 synthetic polymer paint and ochre on milk wood National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

through his art. Although primarily a sculptor, he also paints, and is credited with many of the murals that adorn Aurukun public spaces.

Simona Barkus Acting Assistant Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art

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new acquisition Australian Photography

Douglas T Kilburn South-east Australian Aboriginal man and two younger companions Douglas T Kilburn South-east Australian Aboriginal man and two younger companions 1847 daguerreotype 7.8 x 6.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Gallery recently acquired one of the rarest and most

In Kilburn’s Aboriginal portraits the various combinations

sought after pioneer works of Australian photography –

of male and female figures have a close-up and bunched

a daguerreotype portrait of an Australian Aboriginal man

composition unusual for early daguerreotypes. The three

and two younger companions – that had lain for over

people in the Gallery’s portrait appear to be using each

two decades in a private collection in London. The gem-

other for support rather than the usual neck and head

like image belongs to a group of at least ten portraits of

braces and chairs employed by early photographers. They

Victorian Aboriginal people taken in 1847 by Douglas

wear a considerable array of adornments and artefacts,

Thomas Kilburn (1811–1871), the first resident professional photographer in Melbourne. Kilburn’s portraits are the earliest surviving photographs of Aboriginal people in Australia and among the earliest anywhere of Indigenous people.

Born in London, Kilburn came from a large merchant

family. His Irish grandfather William was successful artist and fabric designer but nothing is known of Douglas’s education or employment before he arrived in Australia possibly with his first wife and child. This was around 1842 probably at the same time as younger brother Charles became a selector and formed a customs business trading

including cloaks, some of which might have been supplied by the photographer as Aboriginal people living close to town no longer lived or dressed in completely traditional ways. Their mixed dress, appearance and presence was not welcome and in the 1850s they were banned from lingering in the newly incorporated City of Melbourne.

Kilburn hoped to find a market for his Aboriginal portraits in London but it seems there was not a great demand either overseas or locally.

Eight Aboriginal portraits are known through

reproductions but only three of these have been located.

as Kilburn Brothers. In 1847, Douglas Kilburn set up a studio

They are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, and have

in his residence in Little Collins Street.

been extensively researched by curator Dr Isobel Crombie.

Kilburn had a great advantage over any other aspiring

Two other portraits are held in private collections and the

photographers in Australia as his younger brother William

sixth example is in the National Gallery of Australia. These

E Kilburn (1818–1891) had opened one of the first

were all acquired at different times and from different

photographic portrait studios in London in 1846 and

sources in England.

soon secured royal favour. His brother’s success no doubt

encouraged Douglas to teach himself photography using

photographer in Hobart where he prospered though

equipment and instructions sent out by William. Douglas

diversified activities and became a politician. He died in

later exhibited watercolours, introduced colouring to

Hobart in 1871 survived by his second wife and four sons

his daguerreotype portraits and did pioneer work with

and a daughter by his first wife.

photography on paper. After first advertising for paying

customers in August 1847, by October Kilburn had

pose and their supposed fear of the camera, the Aboriginal

undertaken a speculative venture making portraits of Port Phillip Aboriginal people coming into the town. Kilburn later described how ‘upon seeing their likenesses so suddenly fixed, they took him for nothing less than a sorcerer’.

In these early years, portrait exposures were still at

least a minute and sitters had to be braced or supported.

46 national gallery of australia

On his return to Australia, Kilburn continued as a

Despite Kilburn’s difficulties in persuading his sitters to

people in his daguerreotypes seem curious and composed.

That their descendents and the public can now return their gaze is the miraculous gift of the art of the camera.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Photography

new acquisition Australian Photography

Bill Henson Untitled #33

Bill Henson Untitled #33 2005–06 Type C colour photograph 127.0 x 180.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The object of my photographs is not always the

cinematic. The mysterious darkness and shimmering

subject. (Bill Henson)

artificial light reverberate with a dark, ominous presence

Untitled #33 – an image of a boat at twilight caught just as the last rays of sun fade from the water – is from the artist’s most recent series, completed during 2005 and 2006. A distinguishing characteristic of Henson’s work is the evolution over time of individual pieces within larger series, suggesting that no single truth exists; rather that multiple open-ended readings of the world are the only possibility.

In this series, landscape images made wandering alone

at night in his hometown of Melbourne or wherever his travels have taken him – often to places on the edge of the urban environment – counterpoint images of languid youths shot in the studio. The image of the bulk carrier, the German owned Helga Selmer, is a departure from his expected subject matter and yet it is quintessential Henson – an intense yet subdued palette, painterly and 48 national gallery of australia

of threatening intent. There is a reference to the present, the particular. It is difficult to look at a vessel likely to be carrying chemicals or crude oil without thinking of recent environmental incidents, and yet just as powerfully the image is redolent of an energy that seems otherworldly – mythical and timeless.

In Henson’s work the viewer moves into a world half-

glimpsed, into the dreamy gloaming hours, a place that exists between wake and sleep. The mood echoes the work of a writer such as Thomas Mann or the composer Richard Strauss in their elegiac musings on the nature of death and beauty. There is a reductive, distilled quality to this image that reveals the photographer’s vision at its most psychologically discerning.

Anne O’Hehir Assistant Curator, Photography

new acquisition International Photography

Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano

Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano is one of the

in his personal album held in the National Museum of

earliest known photographs of Javanese people and

Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, England.

comes from a series on court dancers and musicians

made circa 1858 by the Woodbury & Page studio of

families, were trained from childhood in the graceful and

Batavia. Englishmen Walter Woodbury (1834–1885) and

demanding movements of Javanese dance drama. One pair

James Page (1833–1865), having previously worked as

of girls in the Woodbury picture is wearing the traditional

photographers in Victoria, arrived in Java from Australia in

matching serimpi costumes. However, the Gallery’s Senior

1857, setting up a studio that year. The image of serimpi

Curator of Asian Art, Robyn Maxwell, has observed that

dancers is one of a number of stereographs on glass sold

the dancers are of different ethnic appearance and the

to London publishers Negretti and Zambra apparently in

check pattern costumes are south Sumatran in style.

1859 when Woodbury made a visit to London. The image of the dancers was reproduced as an engraving in the Illustrated London News, 31 July 1861.

A Negretti and Zambra catalogue of circa 1864 lists

the image under the title Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano among a number of scenes from Batoe Toelis near Buitenzorg (Bogor) in the hills of west Java.

Woodbury alone appears to be the author of the serimpi dancers picture as a small print of the subject appears

Court dancers, usually drawn from the ranks of royal

Walter Woodbury (attributed to) Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano c. 1858 albumen silver photograph on card 14.3 x 17.4 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The models may be local girls wearing dance costumes.

By 1864 Walter Woodbury had returned to England

but the Woodbury and Pagestudio remained in business with family members and others as operators until 1912.

Walter continued to work in photography until his death in 1885, most notably inventing the Woodburytype printing process. James Page died in Java in 1865.

Gael Newton Senior Curator, Australian and International Photography artonview

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for thcoming travelling exhibition

Chasing nature: landscape paintings by Eugene von Guérard and Sidney Nolan

To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the National

most celebrated artist of the period. Von Guérard avidly

Gallery of Australia, the Gallery’s Director, Ron Radford,

pursued the representation of nature – as an observer,

has curated an exhibition of treasured paintings from

an explorer and a resident. His remarkable imagery of

the national collection. Ocean to outback: Australian

the Dandenong Ranges, some forty kilometres east of

landscape painting 1850–1950 celebrates the dynamic

Melbourne, conveys a sense of the landscape as a spiritual

century of Australian landscape painting from the colonial

sanctuary and haven, a rejuvenating life-force untainted by

period to the years immediately following the Second

human interference.

World War. The exhibition reflects the great strengths of

the national collection and includes iconic paintings from

the area was a dense bushland of temperate rainforests

the permanent display by artists including Eugene von

and cool fern gullies. Sketchbooks held in the collection

Guérard, Arthur Streeton, Arthur Boyd, Margaret Preston

of the Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales,

and Grace Cossington Smith. The exhibition also provides

contain a number of drawings which document the lush

an opportunity to showcase lesser-known works from the

and largely unexplored forests, a natural resource of

Gallery’s rich holdings by artists including Sidney Nolan and

high-quality timber which was rapidly logged for the

Frederick McCubbin as well as new acquisitions and works

growing industries and settlement within Victoria.

When von Guérard first visited the Dandenong Ranges,

‘Prolific in God’s Gifts’ were the words selected in

which have been restored and reframed in period style.

September 1889 for the Shire of Ferntree Gully coat of

Two of Australia’s eminent artists, Eugene von Guérard

(1811–1901) and Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) are represented

arms. The ranges were home to some fourteen different

by a number of works in the exhibition. Both pursued

species of eucalypt and more than sixty varieties of wild

the artistic exploration of lands little-known to Australia’s

flowers. Painted on return to the artist’s Melbourne

settler population in different ways – von Guérard as a

studio, Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges 1857

member of organised treks throughout much of south-

is a work which combines von Guérard’s meticulous

eastern Australia between 1856 and 1875, and Nolan

observation of local plant species with his artistic interests

spending months at a time in Far North Queensland and

in compositional arrangement and the creation of a ‘mood’

Central Australia between 1947 and 1950, on his own,

particular to this environment. In this case we are privy to

or accompanied by his wife and step-daughter. Both

the magical world of a bower – an enclosed gully of natural

artists also looked to their more immediate environs for

foliage created by the towering tree ferns. A pool of light

inspiration – in the case of the two works considered

on the forest floor leads us to two male lyrebirds cast in

here, areas on the fringe of the major metropolitan cities

shadow, one with its characteristic tail feathers raised – a

where they lived.

natural mimic of the arch of the fern fronds. The theatrical

activities of the lyrebird were one of the early drawcards

Eugene von Guérard arrived in Australia from Europe

in 1852 seeking to make his fortune in the Victorian gold

for tourists to the area, who hoped to witness the singing

fields. After an unsuccessful period mining in Ballarat, he

and dancing of the male bird.

established himself in Melbourne where he became the

50 national gallery of australia

Eugene von GuĂŠrard Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges 1857 oil on canvas 92.0 x 138.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, 1975

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Sidney Nolan Ku-ring-gai Chase 1948 synthetic polymer paint on composition board 91.0 x 102.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976

Eugene von Guérard’s painting received much acclaim in the Melbourne papers and within a few years after this work was completed, ‘ferntree gully’ located close to the Ferntree Gully Hotel had become a popular tourist destination – especially during the summer months. The residents of Melbourne sought the sanctuary of the cool green gullies and active birdlife for their leisure. Chartered horse coaches were available for hire, and by 1889 rail had extended from Ringwood to Upper Ferntree Gully.

In the 1890s thousands of people visited the region on Melbourne Cup Day, a perfect spot for recreational activities in the bush.

For Sidney Nolan, the Australian landscape was a lifelong source of inspiration. Fuelled by a keen interest in travel, Nolan’s personal experiences of the land are closely linked to the development of Australian mythology within his works, as seen in his images of Ned Kelly, Burke and Wills, Mrs Fraser, and Daisy Bates. Between 1951 and 1952 Nolan also created a series of works depicting a number of stories of Christian saints located in the deserts of Central Australia. As with von Guérard, the landscape for Nolan was both a real, lived experience and a vehicle for evoking more personal and contemplative ideas.

In 1948, following a year spent travelling throughout Queensland, Nolan settled in Sydney, where he married Cynthia Hansen née Reed, the writer and sister of his patron John Reed. The marriage between Nolan and Cynthia had caused a painful rift with John and his wife Sunday, and after an unsuccessful visit from the newlyweds in March of 1948, Nolan would never see his first and most important patrons again. The Nolans settled in Wahroonga, a leafy suburb in the municipality of Ku-ring-gai about twenty kilometres north of the city, on the edge of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

Ku-ring-gai Chase 1948 is a startling image of a hazy, smouldering bushfire. There had been an early start to the summer season of bushfires during 1947, the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on 27 October: ‘Last summer’s late rains bought out a bountiful growth of tussock and grass as well as a record season of wildflowers. An almost continuous run of westerly winds to date has dried out the forest to a condition like tinder. It requires only a spark to start a fire, and with the prevailing winds behind it a small

blaze would soon become an inferno.’ Nolan may have witnessed the fires in Wahroonga which were reported by the Herald on 10 November 1947. It is also possible the Herald’s front-page photo of leaping flames, burning trees and hazy sky from a Manly/Brookvale bushfire on 25 October 1947 was used as a visual aid for this work.

Nolan’s skilful handling of paint, swift brushwork and freshness of colour convey the ferocity of this scene – the heat and dust of the wind, crackling of leaves and grasses and the smell of the burning bush. There is a heightened tension in the picture – an unease as to whether the fire is receding or approaching, a knowledge that with a change in conditions the situation could rapidly alter. In Ku-ringgai Chase the advantages of living in rural suburbia seem reversed as the threat of danger encroaches.

Inscriptions on the back of the work suggest Nolan gave the painting to Cynthia on 22 May 1948. A message in pencil (only visible under infra-red) reads ‘Cynthia XXX Sidney’. In this powerful painting, it is possible that Nolan is also exploring his personal reaction to events taking place in his own life, the metaphor of fire transferring to notions of passion, destruction and regeneration.

As cultural commentators and visual communicators, artists have gone beyond topographical analysis and used the environment to explore a range of ideas and concepts, including history and personal spirituality. The works included in Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 display the great breadth of imagery produced in response to the land, which in turn, extends and informs our understanding of the nation we live in. a Beatrice Gralton Associate Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture Ocean to outback: Australian landscape painting 1850–1950 opens at Tamworth Regional Gallery on 3 August 2007 and travels to every state and territory until May 2009.

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travelling exhibition

Colin McCahon Writing and imagining a journey

Colin McCahon Victory over death 2 1970 synthetic polymer paint on unstretched canvas 207.5 x 597.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of the New Zealand Government 1978

I look back with joy on taking a brush of white paint

my mind … 1982, generously loaned by the artist’s long-time

and curving through the darkness with a line of

New Zealand gallery representative, supporter and friend,

white. (Colin McCahon) 1

Peter McLeavey (who played a key role in recommending

In 2008 it will be thirty years since Colin McCahon’s great, monumental Victory over death 2 1970 entered the National Gallery of Australia’s collection. For some it is this region’s equivalent of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles 1952. Both paintings are regarded as iconic works. Both have increased dramatically in value since entering the collection in the 1970s. Both caused something of a furore in the press when they were acquired. When the New Zealand

Victory over death 2 as a gift to Australia).

In purely visual terms Victory over death 2 is

extraordinarily daring for its time with its palette of stark black and white and tonalities of grey and in the way that McCahon gave himself the freedom to embrace the text itself – from the cursive handwriting to the architectural capital letters, stretching over two metres high from the top to the bottom of the composition. On the left in the velvety

Government gifted Victory over death 2 to the Australian

black ground the very indistinct letters ‘AM’ pose a question

people in 1978 some saw it as a joke; a way of making front-

against the ‘I’. This faces the luminous ‘I AM’ that refers

page news. Others on both sides of the Tasman, including

to the voice of God. Guided by the palette and structure

the Gallery’s first director, James Mollison, recognised the

of the work, we move from the dark chasm of doubt and

significance of this daring painting that would become one

struggle to the affirmation of the presence of the Divine in

of the treasures of the national collection.

the luminous pillar ‘I’. Yet even in the towering presence of

these letters we are reminded that revelation is temporary, as

In 2007, as part of its twenty-fifth anniversary

celebrations, the Gallery is pleased to present a trans-

a fragment of the inscription reads: ‘The light is among you

Tasman travelling exhibition featuring Victory over death 2.

still, but not for long’.

The exhibition includes the Gallery’s remarkable collection

of McCahon’s works on paper along with his paintings,

use of written text may look very current but for McCahon

providing an in-depth look at some of the artist’s key

it was part of an ongoing search for faith and meaning in

concerns: faith, nature and the transformative and aesthetic

his art and life. In the face of the issues of his time, including

power of the written word. The show includes works from

the Cold War and threats to the environment, he often felt

1950 through to one of McCahon’s last paintings I applied

he needed words. Early on, when he started his schooling

54 national gallery of australia

Victory over death 2 emerged after a long journey. The

at the Maori Hill Primary School in Dunedin, the act of writing was a frustrating challenge. As a left-hander he was harshly punished for not writing as a particular teacher wanted him to write. He recalled how other teachers were more encouraging, introducing him to the world of poetry; a lifelong passion he later shared with the poets James K Baxter and John Caselberg who became his close friends and collaborators. Early on too, writing presented the magic of practical revelation. One day in Dunedin the young McCahon came across a signwriter slowly plying his trade on a shop window – HAIRDRESSER AND TOBACCONIST – and was entranced.

I watched the work being done and fell in love with signwriting. The grace of the lettering as it arched across the window in gleaming gold, suspended on its dull red field but leaping free from its own black shadow, pointed to a new and magnificent world of painting. I watched from outside as the artist working from the inside slowly separated himself from me (and light from dark) to make his new creation.

(Colin McCahon) 2 In the early 1930s text allied with religion manifested itself tellingly through eccentric Uncle Frank, the uncle of McCahon’s close artist-friend Toss Woollaston. On his visits to his nephew’s house Uncle Frank brought along blackboard

signs lettered with religious texts and Christian symbols as well as a large version of a diagrammatic aid to meditation that he had painted himself. These teaching aids provided a basis for lively debates. Although the younger men eventually tired of Uncle Frank, images and ideas persisted.

In 1969 McCahon worked on a series called Practical religion.

He wanted to communicate ‘practical religion’ – not simply as it was professed in a weekly Sunday ritual but faith tested through a real, raw, direct engagement with ideas in his art.

Between 1946 and the early 1950s, following a concerted period painting the landscape, McCahon did a series of paintings based on religious subjects. He brought the two aspects together in Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950, one of his most important and overtly personal paintings. Exhibited only once during McCahon’s lifetime in The Group exhibition of 1950, this work remained with the artist in his studio until his death in 1987. It suggests his struggle to reconcile faith, creative life and survival in the ‘real’ world at a time when he was finding it hard to make ends meet and to care for his family. On the left McCahon painted a self-portrait looking in towards the crucifixion set against a Canterbury landscape.

On the right, his wife Anne Hamblett stands under the apple tree alongside their son William, set against the hills in Nelson. There are also two biblical timeframes, the Old and New testaments: the laden apple tree of the Garden of

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Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 oil on canvas 89.0 x 117.0 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004

winter 2007

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Colin McCahon North Otago landscape no. 14 1967 synthetic polymer paint on composition board 60.0 x 120.7 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1997 Colin McCahon I applied my mind … 1982 synthetic polymer paint on unstretched canvas 195.0 x 180.5 cm on loan from a private collection, New Zealand

Eden (one of the most poetic images in McCahon’s art), and the crucifixion and thirteen skulls representing Christ and his disciples.

The background landscape in Crucifixion: the apple branch points to important developments in his later work, including landscapes such as North Otago landscape no. 14 1967 with its simplified, elemental forms. A couple of years after painting this landscape McCahon completed a series of about seventy-five ‘writing paintings and drawings’, applying fragments of text onto vertical scrolls of off-white wallpaper.

The quotations come from several sources including Matire Kereama’s The tail of the fish, poems by Peter Hooper, and passages drawn from the New English Bible which his wife, Anne, had given him. In these works on paper McCahon embraces the shape of the long scrolls, 56 national gallery of australia

cut into lengths of around 170 centimetres in height. He accentuates certain letters and phrases, allowing the watery washes to create irregular haloes around them.

By 1982 when McCahon finished I applied my mind … he was at a low ebb. Alcohol had taken a heavy toll, as had the years of struggle to be understood. In the wider world, history kept repeating itself: wars kept happening; people seemed mainly concerned with self and money, ignoring the importance of the natural environment.

He found it hard to make sense of the world. In I applied my mind …, he chose the biblical text accordingly. Also reflecting his state of mind is the way in which he tautly structured the composition into a horizontal band and two vertical columns filled with a careful, obsessive journey of words written over the dark ground. It was one of the last works he painted.

Twenty years after McCahon’s death in 1987, the National Gallery pays tribute to an artistic journey of great intensity and commitment in this travelling exhibition. Along with Victory over death 2, the artist’s personal struggle and passionate enquiries can be discovered in a range of intimate and expansive ways, inscribed in imagery, words and abstractions – in drawings, gouaches, prints and paintings – that continue to intrigue and inspire us. a Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (after 1920) Further information at nga.gov.au/McCahon notes 1 Colin McCahon quoted in Marja Bloem and Martin Browne (eds), Colin McCahon: A question of faith, Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum and Nelson, New Zealand, Craig Potton Publishing, 2003, p. 202 2 Colin McCahon: A question of faith p. 160

travelling exhibitions winter 20 07

James McNeill Whistler Portrait of Whistler 1859 (detail) etching and drypoint National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

An artist abroad: the prints of James McNeill Whistler James McNeill Whistler was a key figure in the European art world of the 19th century. Influenced by the French Realists, the Dutch, Venetian and Japanese masters, Whistler’s prints are sublime visions of people and the places they inhabit. nga.gov.au/Whistler Geelong Gallery, Geelong Vic., 7 June – 19 August 2007 Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston Tas., 1 September – 4 November 2007

Sri Lanka Seated Ganesha 9th–10th century (detail) from Red case: myths and rituals National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia

Michael riley untitled from the series cloud [cow] 2000 (detail) printed 2005 chromogenic pigment photograph National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and Viscopy, Australia

Colin McCahon A focus exhibition showcasing the Gallery’s holdings of one of the Australasian region’s most renowned and respected artists – Colin McCahon (1919–1987). The exhibition includes paintings and works on paper spanning the period from the 1950s to early 1980s. It is significant that the exhibition’s tour of Australia and New Zealand coincides with the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand government gifting to Australia in 1978 the iconic work, Victory over death 2 1970 which has become a destination work for the Gallery. nga.gov.au/McCahon

Moree Plains Gallery, Moree NSW, 19 May – 15 July 2007 Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane Qld, 27 July – 18 November 2007 Stage fright: the art of theatre (Focus Exhibition)

In partnership with Australian Theatre for Young People Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia Loundon Sainthill Costume design for the ugly sister from Cinderella 1958 (detail) gouache, pencil and watercolour on paper National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Mathias Kauage Independence Celebration I 1975 (detail) stencil National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Geraldton Regional Art Gallery, Geraldton WA, 6 April – 17 June 2007

Stage fright: the art of theatre raises the curtain on the world of theatre and dance through works of art, interactives and a program of workshops conducted by educators from the National Gallery and Australian Theatre for Young People.

Worlds from mythology, fairytales and fantasy characters intended for the ballet, opera and stage are shown in exquisitely rendered finished drawings alongside others that have been quickly executed capturing the essence of an idea, posture, movement or character. nga.gov.au/StageFright Walter Nicholls Memorial Gallery, Port Lincoln SA, 5 May – 3 June 2007 Red case: myths and rituals and Yellow case: form, space and design Mosman Art Gallery and Community Centre, Mosman NSW, 9 May – 3 June 2007

Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery @ Inveresk, Launceston Tas., 16 June – 2 September 2007 Imagining Papua New Guinea: screenprints from the national collection Imagining Papua New Guinea is an exhibition of screenprints from the national collection that celebrates Papua New Guinea’s independence and surveys its rich history of printmaking.

Artists whose works are in the exhibition include Timothy Akis, Mathias Kauage, David Lasisi, John Man and Martin Morububuna. nga.gov.au/Imagining

Michael Riley (1960–2004) was one of the most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. His contribution to the contemporary Indigenous and broader Australian visual arts industry was substantial and his film and video work challenged non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly among the most disenfranchised communities in the eastern region of Australia. nga.gov.au/Riley Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo NSW, 12 May – 8 July 2007, and concurrently

The Elaine & Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions Three suitcases of works of art: Red case: myths and rituals includes works that reflect the spiritual beliefs of different cultures; Yellow case: form, space, design reflects a range of art making processes; and Blue case: technology.

These suitcases thematically present a selection of art and design objects that may be borrowed free-of-charge for the enjoyment of children and adults in regional, remote and metropolitan centres.

For further details and bookings telephone 02 6240 6432 or email Travex@nga.gov.au. nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn

Colin McCahon Crucifixion: the apple branch 1950 oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with funds from the Sir Otto and Lady Margaret Frankel Bequest 2004

Michael Riley: sights unseen

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, Caloundra Qld, 16 July – 21 September 2007

Karl Lawrence Millard Lizard grinder 2000 (detail) brass, bronze, copper, sterling silver, money metal, Peugeot mechanism, stainless steel screws National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Blue case: technology Walter Nicholls Memorial Gallery, Port Pirie SA, 4 June – 1 July 2007 Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree NSW, 9 July – 30 September 2007 The 1888 Melbourne Cup Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor NSW, 20 July – 16 September 2007 Exhibition venues and dates are subject to change.

Please contact the gallery or venue before your visit. For more information please phone +61 2 6240 6556 or email travex@nga.gov.au

Artspace Mackay, Mackay Qld, 13 July – 26 August 2007 The National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibitions Program is generously supported by Australian airExpress.

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1 John and Rosanna Hindmarsh with Ron Radford at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005 2 Michael and Philippa Kalazjich and Janita and Col Cunnington at the opening of Grace Crowley: being modern 3 Ray Kennedy, Anne McDonald and Alex Selenitsch at the Australia print symposium 4 Children participating in the Creeping through the jungle musical tour 5 Children participating in the Creeping through the jungle floortalk 6 Visitors enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday 7 Daniel Thomas, Elena Taylor and Ron Radford at the opening of Grace Crowley: being modern 8 Mandy and Lou Westende with Julienne Clunnies Ross at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005 9 Participants at the Australian print symposium 10 Children enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday 11 & 12 Children participating in the Creeping through the jungle floortalk 13 Visitors enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday 14 John Hindmarsh, Rupert Myer, Roger Butler, and Gordon and Marilyn Darling at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005 15 Heather Ried, Tom Rose, Evie Rose, Axel Debenham-Lendon, Pam Debenham and Mary-Lou Nugent at the opening of The story of Australian printmaking 1801–2005 16 Children enjoying Sculpture Garden Sunday 17 Hugh and Neve Elliott at Sculpture Garden Sunday

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Sep 14 Elcho Island JS Junior Suite 4 & 5 Rectangular Window.

Sitting Area 9,930 Sep 12 Yirrkala at sea Sep 15 at sea JS Junior Suite 4&5 Rectangular Sitting Area B Window.

Stateroom 3 9,930 Oval Window or twin portholes. Sitting Area 7,200 Sep 13 Jensen Bay / Hole In The WallSuiteSuite 5 DS Deluxe 5 Window. 3Living Room DS Deluxe Rectangular Window.

Living Room 10,880 Darwin Sep 16 Darwin ARectangular Stateroom Oval Window. Sitting10,880 Area 8,360

Sep 14 Elcho Island Sep 15 at sea Seppreviously 16 Darwin Please note this replaces the Expedition.

Please note this scheduled replacesKimberley the previously 2007 Departure: scheduled Kimberley Expedition. September 6 Departure: 2007 Departure:2007 September 6 September 6

BS BS

OS

OS

Balcony SuiteSuite5 Balcony Owners’ Owners’ Suite

Suite

5

French LivingBalcony.

Room 5 Balcony.

French

JS

12,980

Junior Suite Living 4 &Room 5 Rectangular Window.12,980 Sitting 9,930 Call yourArea travel agent or visit www.orioncruises.com.au

French Balcony 5 French Balcony Separate bedroom & Living Room DS Deluxe Suite

15,080

(02) 9033 8777.

Rectangular Window.15,080 LivingPhone Room1300 361 012 or10,880 Separate bedroom & Living Room BS Balcony Suite 5 French Balcony. Living Room 12,980

5

Fares are per person in Australian Dollars.

For terms and conditions please refer to www.orioncruises.com.au

OS

Owners’

Fares 5are perFrench personBalcony in Australian Dollars.

15,080

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C • A • N•B •E •R•R•A

B A R T O N

Hibernation Package

159.00

$

per night.

Overnight accommodation in a Heritage Room.

Two full buffet breakfasts.

Two bottles of Hardys Collection Wine, 1 Cabernet Merlot & 1 Semillion Chardonay.

Entry for 2 into Parliament House.

Valid 01/03/07 – 31/08/07.

Subject to availability. *Extra person is $15.00

The Brassey of Canberra Belmore Gardens and Macquarie Street, Barton ACT 2600 Telephone: 02 6273 3766 Facsimile: 02 6273 2791 Toll Free Telephone: 1800 659 191 Email: info@brassey.net.au http: //www.brassey.net.au 64 national gallery of australia

Canberran Owned and Operated

A brushstroke into our past

George Lambert The squatter’s daughter 1923–24 Michelago / New South Wales / Australia Oil on canvas National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the generous assistance of James Fairfax AO and Philip Bacon AM, 1991

ActewAGL is delighted to be major sponsor of the George Lambert Retrospective: Heroes and Icons exhibition. Lambert’s painting The squatter’s daughter, depicting Michelago in 1923, is symbolic to ActewAGL as it reflects on a time when ActewAGL was building the foundations to provide essential services to Canberra and the region.

Recognising the importance of Australian art – always.

29 June – 9 September 2007 National Gallery of Austr alia, Canberr a George Lambert The white glove 1921 (detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased 1922 photograph: Jenni Carter for AGNSW

nga.gov.au

ActewAGL Retail ABN 46 221 314 841.

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Athol Shmith Vivien Leigh 1948 gelatin silver photograph 50.0 x 39.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

w i n t e r

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 26 May – 19 August 2007

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= GEORGE W LAMBERT • Very Important photographs