Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

PAINTING A SYMPHONY Roland Wakelin TheBridge under construction Candice Bruce Facing page Roland Wakelin New Zealand/Australla 1887-1971 The Bridge under construction 1928 Oil on composition board 96.5x118cm Purchased 1994. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery's Centenary 1895-1995 Right Roland Wakelin The Bridge under construction c.1928-29 Oil on canvas on board 101.2x121.6cm Purchased 1967 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne \ •hen Sydney art patron Ethel Anderson opened an f exhibition of paintings by Roland Wakelin at the Macquarie Galleries in August 1928, she paid tribute to him as the first artist in Australia to have broken completely with previous traditions: He is an artist who uses colour as a vehicle for emphasising a more lively reaction of form with form. Brilliance of colour comes through contrast of colour. Form, too, can be made more satisfying, more exciting, by contrast and opposition of mass against mass, by rhythmic arrangements of form in opposition to form. And, in order to marshall a greater number of conflicting masses into a binding rhythm that will make them a coherent work of art, a modem painting is made more deeply recessional than a decoration in which line, filled in with flat colour, alone is used .1 Anderson's tribute to Wakelin was a little exaggerated — he was only one of a number of Sydney artists who were experimenting with overseas trends. In fact it had been Wakelin's friend Roy de Maistre who had persuaded him in the direction of colour painting. Anderson's knowledgeable and perceptive comments, however, did identify the truly radical nature of what Wakelin had achieved with this exhibition. Of the thirty-one works included in the 1928 show, two shared the same title — The Bridge from Ball's Head. Almost certainly these two works are those now in public collections (Queensland Art Gallery and National Gallery of Victoria) under the title The Bridge under construction? It is an indication of the raging interest in the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the time that Wakelin chose to exhibit these almost identical versions side by side. His interest in the project was shared by many other artists and observers. The Bridge was photographed by Harold Cazneaux, drawn and painted by Grace Cossington Smith, and etched by Jessie Traill, who described it as 'looking like net-work against the evening sky'.3The building of the Bridge (it opened to great fanfare in 1932) was tracked by continual reports in the daily press which published regular photographs, bulletins and even line drawings of the real and anticipated progress of its construction.4 During these years the growing curve of the Sydney Harbour Bridge fascinated both modern and traditional artists. The conservative establishment celebrated it as an achievement of the 'heroic' age of engineering design; contemporary artists saw the Bridge as a sweeping arch of steel which seemed to embody all the energy of the time. ForWakelin, the paintings of the Bridge in his 1928 solo exhibition represented a convergence of the various paths he had undertaken in order to arrive at a 'modernist' practice. ANew Zealander by birth, Wakelin had received his initial art training at the Wellington Technical School.5In 1912 he came to Australia and the following year enrolled in evening classes taught by Dattilo Rubbo who, though a conservative teacher by European standards, was aware of contemporary trends and encouraged a sense of experimentation. Rubbo introduced his students to the works of the post-impressionists, particularly 132 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965