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Grace Cossington Smith / Australia 1892–1984 / Interior 1958 / Oil on composition board / 91.4 x 58.1cm / Gift of the Godfrey Rivers Trust through Miss Daphne Mayo 1958 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA
Grace Cossington SmithInterior 1958
Not Currently on Display
The interior of Grace Cossington Smith’s Turramurra (Sydney) home was the inspiration for many works. From the mid 1920s, Cossington Smith increasingly used the colour yellow, for to her yellow signified spiritual elevation and happiness.
In Interior 1958 the rich tones and draperies show Cossington Smith’s appreciation of early Italian painting, which she saw in Europe. One of the most striking aspects of the painting is the way that the draperies are pulled back to reveal one corner of the tabletop and leg, a concealing and revealing device found in still-life paintings by Paul Cézanne.
There is also subtle tension in the placement of objects, and a feeling of space and air is created between the glass vases and the clustering of forms in the middle ground.1
Endnotes:
1. Deborah Hart (ed.), Grace Cossington Smith [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2006, p.89.
Grace Cossington Smith played a leading role in the development of early-twentieth-century art in Australia. Born in Sydney, Cossington Smith’s childhood fascination with drawing was encouraged by her family, and from 1910, she received instruction from influential artist and teacher Anthony Dattilo Rubbo.
In 1912, Cossington Smith and her sister, Mabel, left Australia for England, where Grace attended drawing lessons at the Winchester School of Art. After returning to Australia, she resumed studies with Rubbo, whose advocacy for colour and pattern inspired Cossington Smith and her fellow students Norah Simpson, Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin. Her chief interest was colour and the way it could embody a pure, singing quality as well as a spiritual quality, which she saw in the world around her. Cossington Smith employed her knowledge of colour theory in her composition of the picture plane, combining the illusion of depth with a flattening of space.
She exhibited regularly throughout her career but her work was not widely known — or its significance appreciated — until the last decades of her life. In 1971, a retrospective of her work was shown in Sydney before touring nationally. Grace Cossington Smith received an Order of the British Empire and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to the visual arts.
Discussion Questions
1. How many interior spaces can you think of? List as many as you can.
2. To Cossington Smith, yellow signified spiritual elevation and happiness. What connotations does the colour yellow bring to your mind?
Classroom Activities
Research and find three still-life paintings by the artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). Identify the similarities between Cézanne’s paintings and Cossington Smith’s Interior 1958.