Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

and had aspirations to write. In May 1899 Amy published two short stories in the Australian Magazine, the short-lived journal started by several Sydney artists including Lambert, Thea Proctor and Sydney Long as a rival to the Bulletin 2 While not quite a suffragette, Amy was nevertheless rather anti-establishment, particularly so for the times. Tall, thin and elegant, she was given to wearing large, flamboyant hats; her dark eyes and hair and high cheek-bones giving her beauty an exotic, almost mysterious quality. George, in contrast, was blond and blue­ eyed — a 'job-lot Apollo' according to his friend W. B. Beattie. His energywas like that of a comet, Amy wrote, but with a touch of remoteness, as if he were above other people, a quality she found particularly attractive.3He had a 'fine, baritone voice' and a flamboyant personality; something of a dandy, even in the midst of the most dire poverty he would maintain a sartorial presence.4Having enjoyed a precocious success when his painting Across the Black Soil Plains won the Wynne Prize for 1899 and was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Lambert thought that he was destined for greatness. He had little desire for an ordinary life and neither did Amy. She idolised him from the beginning and remained absolutely devoted, despite years of neglect and then widowhood, until her death at the age of ninety-two. Two days after they married in 1900, the Lamberts set off on board the SS Persic for England. They went immediately to Paris where Lambert and his friend Hugh Ramsay studied at Colarossi's studio. Their life was spartan as they tried to eke out a living from the proceeds of Lamberts Bulletin money and the last of his NSW Society of Artists' Travelling Scholarship. After the birth of Maurice in June 1901, the circumstances of their lifestyle became intolerable and they returned to London so that George could seek portrait commissions to improve their income. Amy coped well with their continual need for money, perhaps as a result of her working-class upbringing, often doing the hard domestic work that a servant would normally have carried out. Though continually struggling to make ends meet, the Lamberts moved in a large circle of artists, musicians and writers and led an active social life that revolved around activities such as the annual Chelsea Arts Club Ball.5George organised tableaux vivants, pageants and costume balls during this period and revelled in the theatricality of it all. As his biographer Anne Gray has stated, his paintings are frequently the pictorial equivalent of these performances in which artifice played a necessary role.6George also supplemented their income by giving horse-riding lessons in Hyde Park and doing book and magazine illustrations.7Always a good draughtsman, he now honed his drawing skills to a point few artists reached and is deservedly known now as much for his drawings as his paintings. Two such works from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection are On the Strand 1909 and The simpler life 1905 — the latter a portrait study of Thea Proctor — and would seem to confirm the generally held view that it is in these simpler sketches that Lambert best caught the expression of the sitter. In the summer of 1903 Thea Proctor re-entered the Lamberts' lives. She had come to London to study and both George and Amy greeted her warmly and compassionately, understanding at once her homesickness and loneliness. She became a daily visitor to the Lambert household, taking tea with them and sharing visits to concerts and the theatre. Above George W. Lambert On the Strand 1909 Pencil on thin wove paper 28.5x11.8cm Purchased 1960 Queensland Art Gallery Right George W. Lambert Kitty Powell 1909 Oil on canvas 127x101cm Purchased 1989 from the estate of Lady Trout with a special allocation from the Queensland Government Queensland Art Gallery At first she visited both husband and wife, until Amy began asking if they had to see 'quite so much of Thea'. Soon she began to sit for Lambert in his studio and it was in that year that Lambert's Portrait o f Miss Thea Proctor 1903 (AGNSW) was exhibited ('on the line', declared Lambert proudly years later) at the Royal Academy. At 24, Thea was six years younger than Lambert (Amy was one year older). An elegant young woman from a solid country background, she was child-free and free- spirited — a younger version of his wife — and was, in addition, as obsessed with art and art-talk as Lambert himself. She soon developed a habit of coming and going from both studio and house as she liked. In August 1905 a second son, Constant, was born and Amy became totally taken up with the childrens welfare.8As their small flat was now very crowded, Lambert took a studio in Chelsea where he spent most of his time. As Lamberts career as a society portraitist grew, he was busier and busier, and Amy threw herself completely into motherhood, a role she truly relished. Adistance developed between husband and wife, reinforced by the nature of Lambert's social and professional life which, as often as not, excluded women. In 1906, for example, he had joined the all-male Modern Society of Portrait Painters (formed in opposition to the conservative Society of Portrait Painters) and many evenings were spent socialising with expatriate artists Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and George Coates, as well as the British painters Augustus John, Glyn Philpot, Francis Derwent Wood and William Orpen. By 1907 Lambert was earning a sizeable income from his society portraits (the amount from portraiture alone that year was 600 pounds), thus enabling him greater freedom outside the home.9The household became a complex one of competing egos and it is this domestic drama that Lambert — subconsciously perhaps — has painted in Portrait group (The mother) and in other similar works. There has been constant speculation about whether Lambert and Proctor were lovers. Some who knew them thought it was possible to see that they were, 'just by 104 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965