Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Henry Short Our adopted country. To the memory of the lamented heroes of the Victorian exploration 1861 1861 Oil on canvas 70x90.7cm La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria) is a memorial to the Burke and Wills expedition that his son William was unsuccessful in joining. It is a lavish composition that depicts among the profusion of fruit and flowers, portraits of the three ill-fated protagonists, Burke, Wills and Gray, on a silver um. The one survivor, King, appears on a tiny locket to the right. Silhouetted against the table­ cloth is a butterfly, its presence traditionally referring to the temporality of life. (The butterfly is also included alongside cut fruit and nest eggs in van Os's Flowers, underscoring more persuasively the ephemeral nature of life.) Short had responded quickly to a market for topical subjects with a local flavour, placing Lamented heroes within the genre of still life that was his passion. Fruit and flowers 1859, although comparable to the floral abundance of Lamented heroes, does not share its overt allegorical content. Instead, we are offered a large selection of flora that could have been plucked from Short's cottage garden in the height of summer. Most of the plants depicted were introduced to Australia, and were thus also available in England. There are no obvious indigenous species, but scattered throughout the picture are objects that are expressions of, and peculiar to, colonial interests. His selection of fruit and flowers, although seemingly casual, represented species of plants transplanted to Australian soil from the far reaches of the globe: alongside the familiar English roses Short placed African coleus, pineapple from central South America, and the peach from China. Colonial gardens were a botanical encyclopedia, a backyard experiment in cultivating worldwide diversity and cross­ fertilisation. What Short was illustrating was the capacity of the Empire to expand its territories, to investigate the far comers of the globe in order to scientifically document exotic species, and to colonise these 'new' lands — to spread the message of the Empire, so to speak, through flowers. Despite the arrogance implicit in colonisation, Short's Fruit and flowers has a distinct sense of democratic optimism through his juxtaposition of a variety of flowers, ripe fruit and wild grasses. All of the species in Short's garden grow magnificently, irrespective of cultural or material value, class or origin. This luxuriance may be seen as a covert metaphor for a less restrictive society, commensurate with the flourishing colony, where one's origins did not necessarily dictate one's eventual social position. Everything had the ability to grow to its full potential in the new land. Fruit and flowers appears more untidy, more naive, and less contrived than Dutch still-life painting where often expensive flowers are laboriously documented over several seasons and are shown at various stages of efflorescence. Short's fruit and flowers are all depicted at the fullness of bloom: everything is at its peak, bursting with vigour. Such is the sense of excess that the composition borders on horror vacui (fear of nothingness): it appears impossible to place even one more stem into the crowded silver vase, and nearly all the remaining spaces on the marble table top are filled. Short's concern is with the natural world, reflecting the abundance of which his adopted homeland is capable. In the Antipodes, plants grow in profusion all year round, unrestricted by a brief season of nurtured growth (the antithesis, that is, of short English summers). There is little evidence of rot, decay or intervention by hungry insects, a signal departure from the vanitas style of still life which emphasises mortality, as seen in Short's Lamented heroes. There, the ephemeral butterfly indicates the temporality of life, and reinforces the sense of tragedy. In Fruit and flowers, a few rose petals are beginning to fall, but this hint at mortality is more than compensated by the tendrils that have escaped from the mass of flowers to twine around the base of the decanters. Nature appears as an uncontainable organism that silently transgresses the bounds of regimented placement. Nature and culture are presented together in untidy harmony, the diversity of flora is combined with ornately decorated tableware. On close inspection it is not only the presence of these disparate elements that conveys the link between nature and culture, but in a more complex manner the decorative elements reflect the ambivalence that the colonists felt, caught as they were between harbouring a desire for European artefacts of their past and conveying an optimism for their colonial present. 20 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965