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Antiques & of
REWARDING RESEARCH: A RENAISSANCE MASTERPIECE RECONSTRUCTED
JAPANESE ARTS IN 19TH CENTURY SOUTH AUSTRALIA
AMASSING FIVE CENTURIES OF INDONESIAN TEXTILES
FEBRUARY – AUGUST 2009 ISSUE 76 AUSTRALIA $16.95 NZ $20.95 SINGAPORE $20.00 UK £7.00 US $13.00 €10.50
ROUNDUP OF INTERNATIONAL ART EVENTS
Contents ACQUISITIONS 118
121
122
114
4
EDITORIAL
Bessie Gibson, Jeune femme en rose pale, 1912 Queensland Art Gallery
EXHIBITION REVIEW
Mel Robson, Belmont porcelain suite, 2008
42
Robert Wade, Pulpit Rock series, 1983-2007 Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
Byzantium 330-1453 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London Julia Boadle
Ipswich Art Gallery Queensland 124
A royal passion for French porcelain Kathryn Cecil
Roman sarcophagus, c. 290-300 AD The J. Paul Getty Museum
Images of Ancient Egypt Richard Parkinson
Early Australian furniture: Sofa, c. 1820 and Work table, c. 1869 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
120
109
HERITAGE 36
A new portrait gallery for Australia Helen Musa
131
AROUND THE AUCTIONS Auction highlights from the major houses
ART 18
144
LIBRIS Anne Marie Graham’s vision of tropical Queensland
84
62
85
Chinoiserie in suburbia: the art of Anna Hoyle
Book review: Bernard D Cotton, Scottish Vernacular Furniture Helen Proudfoot
Sickert in Venice Ian Dejardin
66
Helen Musa
Lyndell Brown and Charles Green: Framing conflict Warwick Heywood
Book review: John McDonald, Art of Australia, Volume 1: Exploration to Federation
Glenn R Cooke 56
INDEX OF ADVERTISERS
86
Book review: Emily McCulloch Childs and Ross Gibson, New Beginnings: Classic Paintings from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art
Helen Hewson 80
Reconstructing a Renaissance masterpiece Xavier F Salomon
COVER 88
ART NEWS A selection of international events to diarise
143
CONTRIBUTORS
Les fleurs dédaignées, 1925 is an arresting painting by Australian expatriate artist Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884-1961). It was painted in Paris for submission in the Salon in 1925.
DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN 10
A golden era of Japanese arts Jennifer Harris
28
Silver – with a pinch of salt Tom Bowtell
50
The Courtauld wedding chests: the story of a Renaissance marriage Caroline Campbell
74
Bernard Leach and his circle Sarah Hughes
104
Five centuries of Indonesian textiles Sharon Sadako Takeda
2 WORLD OF ANTIQUES & ART
The subject of this portrait was a Parisian model with a reputation for being moody and cantankerous. The dress worn by the model was a costume from the artist’s wardrobe chosen for the painting to give the impression of an Italian sixteenth century portrait. She stands before a nineteenth century replica of a seventeenth century French tapestry, once owned by the artist, depicting the countryside. Rix Nicholas created a polished, mannerist portrait with a surface coldness. The subject’s pale skin appears smooth and without blemish, as though she was made of porcelain.
decorative arts & design 2
1
3 1 Martindale Hall, Mintaro, 1932, photograph. Residence of John Andrew Tennant Mortlock (1894-1950), built in 1879 by Edmund Bowman. Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
2 Martindale Hall, Mintaro, 1936, photograph, showing sitting hall, stairway and gallery. Image courtesy State Library of South Australia 3 Norimitsu (Japanese, active late 19th century), Elephant carrying urn and rakan, c. 1890, bronze, shakudõ, 114 x 87 x 42 cm. Ayers House Museum, National Trust of South Australia, Adelaide
A golden era:
Japanese arts FROM MARTINDALE HALL REUNITED
The environs of the neo-Georgian Italianate mansion, Martindale Hall in South Australia’s Clare Valley was the site
JENNIFER HARRIS
ven from its opulent beginnings in
of the film classic ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock.’ It also housed a
E
significant collection of Japanese arts that became
cost of £30,000, built Martindale Hall on
fashionable just after Japanese trade with the West opened
1879 when the Bowman family, at a
11,000 acres on the edge of the small township of Mintaro, Japanese pieces
in the mid-19th century. Dispersed in 1965 the collection is
decorated the main rooms. Six
reunited for an exhibition that highlights the fashion for
thousand pound was spent on internal
Japanese objects in the grand homes of Australia at the turn of the 20th century. 10 WORLD OF ANTIQUES & ART
furnishings such as the blackwood staircase and marble mantelpieces from Italy including one in the drawing room
art
Bye-bye cold Melbourne1:
Anne Marie Graham’s vision OF TROPICAL QUEENSLAND
Anne Marie Graham is one of the true survivors in the Australian art scene. For more than fifty years she has pursued her vision of a colourful and engaging world and, like many artists from ‘the south,’ has been inspired by her visits to tropical Queensland. McCulloch published Australian Naïve
colours associated with European peasant
Painters and included Anne Marie Graham
art, retaining the power of direct statement
raham had been exhibiting her work
as a ‘borderline case’ because she
and a youthful freshness of vision.’ Her
for twenty years when Bianca
‘consistently uses simple shapes and
good friend and fellow Bell School
GLENN R COOKE
G 1
18 WORLD OF ANTIQUES & ART
decorative arts & design
Silver
with a pinch of salt Once valued as a highly prized commodity, as much for its commercial value as for its role in cuisine, salt has inspired generations of artisans to create vessels in precious metal of remarkable complexity to house what is now regarded as a common household condiment.
TOM BOWTELL
hile today it is something we
W
blithely sprinkle on our chips,
salt’s rich history makes it much more than a mere condiment. Salt’s relative scarcity, and its vital role as a preservative and flavour enhancer – it made the unpalatable food of the past just about bearable – meant that until
1 Standing salt, 1589, gilt, impressed maker’s mark: I G, h: 30.5 cm. Kindly loaned by the Salters’ Company
28 WORLD OF ANTIQUES & ART
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