Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

both the expectation implicit within the commission and the artists early stage of development. The artists gaze carries not only evidence of his age but the weight of an unformed manner of artistic expression. At 21, Rees had a bias for the particular over the general, for asserting dense and distinct details which left the whole seemingly muted. His vivid observations of bricks are precise to a degree where they articulate more about the temperament of the artist than visual experience. Artistic merit, for 'the boy artist', was synonymous with punctilious, painstaking craftsmanship — which, for the viewer, is easier to admire than to take much pleasure in. A newspaper review of the St Brigid's drawings accurately predicted: The series is an admirable one, and the artist has displayed a fine appreciation of his subjects, and shown a skill in execution that will make his future work of keen interest to lovers of art .8 Drawing remained the essence of Rees's art throughout a long and distinguished career. His early proclivity for art of the eye later married with a more mature inclination towards art of the heart and mind. They 'married' by the Sydney Harbour foreshore, whose romantic scenery coerced Rees towards greater artistic licence in his drawings from 1918 onwards. Before then, Rees had only occasionally surrendered to his imagination during periods of illness or tedious employment. Idle fantasy and the lack of a visible subject motivated him to sketch an imaginary Brisbane, where the colonial architecture was synthesised with the majestic buildings and boulevards of Paris. An earlier and less fanciful excursion from visual reality is evident in Exterior, St Brigid's, Red Hill. Rees's talent for memorising the contours of a building allowed him the liberty, once he had recorded a detail or portion of the building, to complete the image later from memory. Plotting the foundations of the church drawings in pencil, which were later partially erased using soft bread­ crumbs, Rees completed the final pen and ink renderings away from the subject. This practice may have unintentionally helped to create a topographical anomaly which exists in the external drawing. St Brigid's vestry protrudes from the western wall of the chancel. Rees's drawing shows the west­ facing vestry raked with bright sunlight at a slight forward angle from the right. The cast shadows, therefore, position the sunlight as emanating from the south — an impossibility in the southern hemisphere. A further explanation for this anomaly is that Rees may have intentionally wished to enhance reality, as the direct afternoon sun does little to help reveal the form of the building. Perhaps Rees was compelled to 'move' the sun, like a portrait photographer repositioning a studio light in order to flatter the subject. Similarly, it appears that Rees contrived the placement of the figures in the two drawings, positioning them like spear-carriers on an opera stage. In Interior..., two altar boys placed in the central foreground cleverly emphasise the imposing weight of the brick balcony which seems directly above them. The figures contained within the two rear archways accentuate the elevated proportions of the building — they emerge, tentatively, from the dark spaces between a giant's toes. In Exterior..., Rees placed a family grouping at the beginning of a path that originally led from the church to a parish school. One's eye is drawn in a vertical sweep along the pathway, over the figures, which form a bridge between pathway and building, up the buttress above them on the vestry wall and, finally, up the chancel wall to a bell lantern on the roof. The height of the figures constitutes only a small fraction of this visual journey. They are dwarfed by the towering edifice behind them and, equally, by the great distance to which Rees was forced to retreat in order to perceive its entire elevation. A conifer in the right foreground of the exterior drawing appears suspiciously well advanced for a tree that, presumably, was planted only two years before when construction of the church was completed in 1914. Moreover, the conifer seems quite similar in appearance to the cypress pines abundant in Pennell's Tuscan landscapes. Sydney Ure Smith, writing of Rees's drawings a year after the St Brigid's commission, states: His drawings of buildings and streets would sometimes annoy the historian, as he has a way of donating trees and ornamental devices where they are often, unfortunately, not to be seen. On the other hand, the impulse to add [a] better setting to his picture would delight a town-planning enthusiast, and if it makes a better picture — why not ?9 Rees's cosmetic alterations to the appearance of St Brigid's are in no way contrary to his faithful realism. Both were inspired out of admiration for the building. His alterations are not so dramatic as to allow the drawings to transcend visual description, yet nor do they limit the drawings to a visual description that is lifeless. The drawings are restrained within the self-delighting acumen of a young artist's illusionistic technique, but it is a restraint that, no doubt, was appropriate for the commission. Rees imbued St Brigid's Church with the appropriate grace and decorum, while he indulged in every detail of its architecture under the intense Brisbane sunlight. Michael Beckmann Is an education officer at the Queensland Art Gallery. 'TH E BOY ARTIST' 119