my collection

Artwork

‘As an artist, Dattilo-Rubbo is best known for his social realist portraits of Sydney’s unconventional characters.’ ¹  These portraits tackled new ground, as they depicted vagrants and old people, who were not typical subjects at the time. The works strengthened the early years of his career as they were highly admired for their craftsmanship and the genre resonated strongly with the Australian public.

In 1906, Dattilo-Rubbo travelled across various cities in Europe, which ignited his passion for modern art. Pea gathering (Kurrajong Heights) exemplifies Anthony Dattilo Rubbo’s style after 1906. It depicts Kurrajong Heights, north-west of Sydney at the foothills of the Blue Mountains — an area of scenic fruit orchards that was a popular destination for country holidays.

Endnotes:

Artist

Anthony Dattilo Rubbo was born in Naples in 1870 and received classical art training in Italy. He arrived in Australia in 1897 having been awarded the diploma of professor of drawing in public institutions by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Naples, and began teaching in Sydney.

In 1906 Rubbo spent seven months in Europe. He returned with reproductions of paintings by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and others whose work was little known in Australia at the time. Influenced by these artists, Rubbo enthusiastically began to teach their ideas in his lessons at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales in Sydney. His students included Grace Cossington Smith, Roland Wakelin and Roy de Maistre.

Artwork

Bathing hour (L’heure du bain) c.1909 is thought to depict a beach on France’s Channel Coast, which, in the early twentieth century, was frequented by the upper middle class.

Bathing was not yet common and, while it was unusual for a female child to appear naked in polite society, it was equally unusual for her to be tended to by her mother rather than a nanny. By contrasting the girl’s nakedness and the mother’s flowing robes with the more restrictive costumes of the women in the background, Fox may be commenting on the relaxation of social customs that was occurring in Europe at the time.

The painting is one of two versions of the same subject. The earlier of the two, entitled The bathing hour 1909, is in the collection of the Castlemaine Art Gallery & Historical Museum, Victoria. The immediacy of the brushwork and the realistic shadows that characterise the earlier version indicate that it was probably painted en plein air, directly from the subject. This later version, a more formal painting, in which the artist has eliminated some of the shadowing of the subject, was probably painted entirely in the artist’s studio.

Artist

Emanuel Phillips Fox was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne. He trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1881 to 1886 and travelled to Paris the following year to study. Over the next five years, he joined artist colonies in northern France and in Cornwall, England, and exhibited in Paris.

On his return to Australia in 1892, his achievements were recognised with a solo exhibition of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1893 he and George Tucker established the Melbourne Art School.

In 1902, Fox returned to Europe to paint Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770, a work commissioned by the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria. He married English artist Ethel Carrick in 1905, and the couple based themselves in Paris while Fox made a series of painting trips through France, Italy and Spain. They returned to Australia in 1913 where Fox undertook a series of portrait commissions of eminent Australians.

Artwork

The recipe depicts Frederick McCubbin’s second youngest daughter, Sheila, reading a recipe card in the pantry of Fontainbleu, the family’s home at Mt Macedon in Victoria. ¹ According to McCubbin’s youngest daughter Kathleen, the work would have been painted during the family’s summer vacation. ²

‘The painting is not a portrait of Sheila, but a portrayal of the domestic interior she inhabits, her own private universe. The theme was the mainspring of Edwardian painting, which McCubbin knew from London. It is McCubbin’s choice of subject that reveals the influence of his 1907 trip there, as well as his brushwork, feathery in parts, burnished in others.’ ³

Endnotes:

Artist

Frederick McCubbin was born in Melbourne in 1855, the son of a baker who had recently emigrated to Australia from England.

When he left school in 1869 at the age of fourteen McCubbin began work in a solicitor’s office, his father hoping that he would make law his career. McCubbin however spent most of his time making model theatres until his father found out and sent him to work at the family bakery.

The next year McCubbin began studying drawing at night at the Artisans’ School of Design at Carlton, where his teacher was Thomas Clark. When Clark became drawing master at the Melbourne National Gallery School, McCubbin enrolled there.

Recognizing his son’s determination to become an artist, McCubbin senior apprenticed him to a coach-maker where he learnt to paint emblematic and decorative designs. This apprenticeship ended in 1875 and McCubbin enrolled fulltime at the Gallery School, studying painting under Eugen von Guerard. McCubbin found von Guerard’s teaching uninspiring as he expected students only to copy pictures in the Gallery’s collection.

On the death of his father in 1876, McCubbin had to leave his studies to work in the family business. He continued to study painting at night at the Gallery School where he formed a friendship with fellow student, Tom Roberts.

Artwork

George Frederick Folingsby’s special skill in painting drapery and costume led to many works featuring full length fashionably costumed women. In The first lesson the elements of patterned rug, cloisonné vases, prints on the wall, and hat and cloak casually positioned to one side act as forms and shapes as well as devices for counterpointing colour notes in the figure studies.

The conventional pyramid structure in the figure composition uses the gaze of the woman at its apex to draw the viewer to the narrative. Her half-seated position allows the artist to explore the texture, trimming and fullness of her gown. The pale grey of her sash is played off in the darker grey of the prints, the grey-green of her hat ribbon and a dramatic reprise is developed with the bright blue-grey of the child’s sash. The use of red is developed in a similar way and extended to major furnishings in the pattern in the rug and in the warm mahogany tone of the timber in the piano.

This painting shows the artist’s wife, Clara, and his daughter. Clara Folingsby was herself an artist who was committed to an insane asylum in Heidelberg, Germany. A few years after her death in 1874, Folingsby migrated to Australia with his daughter.¹

Endnotes:

Artist

George Frederick Folingsby arrived at Melbourne, Australia, in July 1879 and established a reputation as a portrait painter. From 1882 he was master of Melbourne’s National Gallery Art School. His teaching was a major influence on Australian painting and it formed the basis for several important figure paintings with Nationalist overtones. He also encouraged the combination of figures and landscape.

Several of Folingsby’s works show interior incidents of confrontation or dramatic discovery with the action arranged laterally or diagonally across the space. It is a conventional compositional device adopted by many of his students.

Artwork

Julian Ashton’s choice of subject for this painting was interesting for several reasons. In the decades leading up to the date when (Young girl sewing in a garden) was produced, the most commonly favoured artists’ subjects were landscapes and history paintings (in which subjects from Australian social history, such as pioneering and gold mining, were idealised in order to supplement Australia’s apparent lack of ‘real history’). Although figures were often incorporated into these landscapes, they seldom formed the focus of a composition and were very rarely women or children, who were characteristically confined to interiors.

The identity of the model for (Young girl sewing in a garden) is not known. Ashton had a daughter, Bertha, however she would have been too young in 1890 to have been his model for this painting. In fact, the model was just as likely to have been a stranger, prevailed upon to pose for Ashton as she went about her work. Ashton recorded a similar incident in his biography: ‘I painted a watercolour of . . . [Clyde] street . . . and wishing to liven it up with a figure I asked a little girl who was skipping about if she would stand still for a few minutes . . .’¹

Endnotes:

Artist

Julian Rossi Ashton was born in Alderstone, England in 1851. He studied art in London at the West London School of Art, and in Paris at the Académie Julian, before emigrating to Australia in 1878 to work as an illustrator for newspapers in Melbourne and Sydney. Ashton painted landscapes, portraiture and figure groups in watercolours and oils.

He was among the first artists in Australia to adopt and teach plein air painting, soon becoming central to a group of artists experimenting with this technique including Frank P. Mahoney, A.H. Fullwood, A.J. Daplyn and Charles Conder, who painted around Sydney Harbour and in the region of the Hawkesbury River during the 1880s.

Ashton’s studies at the Académie Julian in Paris familiarised him with French impressionist painting techniques, particularly the practice of painting ‘en plein air’ (literally, ‘in open air’). While Louis Buvelot had already introduced plein air painting to Australia before Ashton’s arrival, it was Buvelot’s practice to merely execute detailed pencil sketches ‘en plein air’, later completing his canvases in the studio.

Artwork

The Wannon Falls 1868 depicts a pastoral landscape with evidence of human habitation in the form of a small farmhouse, and sheep and cattle on the surrounding ridges. Located around 350 kilometres west of Melbourne, the falls were first explored by European settlers in 1836. By the 1860s, the falls had become a favoured destination for tourists from Melbourne. Scenic, yet potentially dangerous, waterfalls provided the quintessential tourist experience.

Louis Buvelot’s painting emphasises the day-to-day aspects of life, along with the colours, forms and qualities of light particular to the area. The work also reflects Buvelot’s changing attitude — he depicts the landscape in a naturalistic rather than a romantic manner, concentrating on those aspects of the landscape that he found distinctively Australian.

Artist

Born in Switzerland in 1814, Louis Buvelot studied art in Lausanne and Paris. After some years spent between Switzerland, Brazil and the East Indies, he migrated to Melbourne in 1865, aged 51.

On his arrival in Melbourne, Buvelot established a photographic studio in Bourke Street East with his companion, Caroline Julie Beguin. He abandoned the business after a year to focus on painting and proceeded to make his name as one of Australia’s foremost landscape artists.

Many artists in Australia in the mid nineteenth century were grappling with how best to portray local conditions. Buvelot’s work and his advocacy for the development of a uniquely Australian aesthetic influenced a younger generation of artists, including Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin who went on to form the Heidelberg School.

Artwork

Completed 13 years after Godfrey Rivers arrived in Australia, Under the jacaranda 1903 offers a view of early twentieth-century life in Brisbane, with the subject reflecting a popular genteel European tradition of ‘taking tea’ in an attractive outdoor setting.

The work depicts the artist and his wife, Selina, under the shade of a jacaranda tree in full bloom in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. Rivers captures the majestic form of the tree, emphasising its distinctive colour with the contrasting green vegetation and the sparkling accent of the red umbrella. To the right of the foreground figures, the stone used as edging and in rockeries throughout the gardens can be seen. It is most likely composed of gneiss, a rock used as ballast on ships, and coral dredged from the nearby Brisbane River.

The jacaranda, planted by the Gardens’ Superintendent in 1864, is almost certainly the first one grown in Australia. Seeds of the native South American species were brought to Brisbane that same year, and by 1875 about 50 000 seeds and cuttings had been distributed in Queensland. Many of the jacarandas now growing in Brisbane suburbs are the progeny of this first tree.

Artist

Richard Godfrey Rivers was born in 1858 in Plymouth, England. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy before moving to Australia in 1889. Along with many painters of the Australian landscape who studied in Europe, Rivers needed to adapt his colour palette for Australia’s intense sunlight.

Rivers was Art Master at the Brisbane Technical College from 1891 to 1915, and during this time he made the adjoining City Botanic Gardens a popular outdoor painting and sketching location. His students included Bessie Gibson, Vida Lahey and Lloyd Rees.

An active member of the Queensland Art Society, he exhibited annually between 1891 and 1916, and was president of the society several times. A tireless advocate for the establishment of a public art gallery in Queensland, he was successful in persuading Premier Hugh Nelson to establish such an institution. The Queensland National Art Gallery opened in 1895, with Rivers serving as honorary secretary to the trustees. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed honorary curator. In 1915, Rivers moved to Tasmania where he died in 1925.

Artwork

Monday morning 1912 launched Vida Lahey’s career when it was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Queensland Art Society, Brisbane, in 1912.

The painting shows in vivid colour and detail two women doing the weekly wash with copper tubs and bar soap at the Lahey family home, Greylands, in Indooroopilly, Brisbane. Esme, a younger sister of the artist, was the model for the woman at the washtub. The other woman is Flora Campbell, a family friend. The painting portrays ideas of femininity and feminism in a bygone era, when women’s lives were generally depicted in a more genteel fashion in Australian art and such hard labour went unacknowledged.

Monday morning follows the National Gallery of Victoria Art School tradition of the large narrative painting and, through its focus on atmospheric effects, shows the influence of Frederick McCubbin’s tutoring and his interest in Australian Impressionism. Students were encouraged to produce a large narrative painting to compete for the school’s triennial travelling art scholarship. This outstanding painting is Lahey’s only surviving large-scale work of the period.

Artist

Vida Lahey was born at Pimpama, near the Gold Coast, Queensland. Her first known paintings date from 1902. She studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, and privately with Walter Withers. She also studied in Europe, but always returned to Brisbane where she lived and painted for most of her life.

Lahey was one of a new breed of artist — the trained professional who superseded the Victorian tradition of the genteel lady amateur. She exhibited more than 2000 paintings in about 200 exhibitions, many of them interstate and overseas.

Lahey advocated creative development as a priority in art education and was a pioneer of art education for children. Thousands of Queenslanders owe their art education to this dynamic woman, from her time teaching at the Brisbane High School for Girls (now Somerville House), her private tuition and classes at the Queensland Art Gallery, and her public lectures and broadcasts.