Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

terrible because of its beauty.14De Maistre has achieved a hypnotising tension between powerful attraction and powerful revulsion. Other works in the series are sometimes marred by an apparent lack of feeling, created in most cases by the perfunctory nature of the depiction of the secondary figures in the works. Often these figures appear wooden, lifeless, disproportioned and distracting. This can be seen in the two outer figures in Christ is nailed to the Cross. The stilted drawing and rigid form of these figures detracts from the more lively form of the Christ figure and the dynamism of the upright posts of the two other crosses and the ladders. In contrast to the limited church patronage he received, some of de Maistre's religious work had a wider appeal. Douglas Milvain, a previous owner of Christ is nailed to the Cross, valued it for the warm, earthy colours which he felt were an evocation of the Australian landscape. Similarly, the painting The Garden of Gethsemane c.1950 was part of the private collection of Sir Leon and Lady Trout before being donated to the Queensland Art Gallery. The secular appeal of this work could also be seen in the landscape, identified by curator and critic Daniel Thomas as a scene of Palm Beach, north of Sydney. In The Garden o f Gethsemane, de Maistre has depicted the story, related in the first three gospels, of Jesus taking three of his disciples to the Garden to watch over him while he prayed, just prior to his betrayal and arrest, but on three occasions returning to find them sleeping: Tarry ye here and watch with me. And he went a little further and fell on his face and prayed ... And he cometh unto the disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, what could ye not watch with me one hour ?15 By placing the praying figure of Christ at the entrance of a cave-like structure, with arms outstretched in surprise or alarm or wonderment as much as in prayer, de Maistre has alluded to the discovery of the empty sepulchre after the Resurrection. By showing the disciples sleeping peacefully, enclosed and shielded from the events around them by soft folds of cloth, he has evoked the Christian belief of salvation through faith rather than action. Finding the disciples asleep a third time, Jesus said to them: 'Sleep on now, and take your rest; behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners'.16 This incident from the Christian story is set not in the original Garden of Gethsemane — renowned for the beauty of its olive trees — but in part of the Australian bush with eucalypt trees and the Palm Beach coastline in the distance (the location of several of his modernist Australian works). De Maistre has personalised but also universalised the Christian message. The disciples are placed so that they are almost ejected from the picture plane into the viewer's space; the viewer becomes one of them, to be saved through Christ's intermediary power. De Maistre's skill as a colourist is well shown in the subtle and beautiful tones of blues, greens and browns in the work, and his ability as a designer in the compact arrangement of figures and trees, which blend together in their shapes and forms but at the same time are distinct and readable. Although simplified in form and colour, the depiction of the slouched, sleeping figures fully conveys the relaxed physicality of the bodies. De Maistre has succeeded not only in conveying the sincerity of his own faith but also in producing a visually pleasing work of art that can be admired and enjoyed for its aesthetic quality as well as its symbolic meaning. In contrast to de Maistre's concentration on religious imagery, almost all Herbert Badham's work has been of the day-to-day life around him in Sydney: works such as George Street, Sydney 1934 (private collection) show the humdrum life of the city street, and Breakfast Piece 1936 (AGNSW) the mundaneness of the boiled egg for breakfast.17 Although de Maistre and Badham were contemporaries (bom in 1894 and 1899 respectively), de Maistre exhibited publicly as early as 1919 and his most important work was produced before 1920, while Badham achieved his best work in the 1930s and 1940s. The two artists had, however, a similar art education. Both attended Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School, though de Maistre also studied with Dattilo Rubbo!8Whereas Badham absorbed Ashton's teaching on the importance of good draughtsmanship, de Maistre concentrated on aspects of modernist design. When de Maistre won the Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship in 1923, Julian Ashton resigned from the society in protest at the award being given to 'so ill- equipped a student'.19While de Maistre sought the spiritual and later the surreal and the religious through modernist techniques, Badham used a realist style to depict the life he saw. Badham's work, however, is not as straightforwardly realist as it first appears and in fact he shared many of the same intentions as de Maistre. Commentators on Badham draw attention to his profound interest in perspective.20While works such as The fairground 1944 (Australian War Memorial) and Town band 1951 (private collection) can be seen simply as the artist depicting the scenes from an unusual angle, the radiating forms and movement from a central point convey, in both works, feelings of vertigo and uneasiness.21 In The fairground, the central light causes deep shadows to fall at odd and different angles. The effect is sinister and disorienting. In Town band, the circle of bandsmen tilted against the picture plane is similarly disturbing. The caricatured faces in Snack bar 1944 (private collection) exaggerate the city types almost to the point of ghoulishness: the viewer is trapped in their midst.22The mundaneness of Breakfast Piece is undermined by the fact that the ordinary everyday breakfast egg, the comforting blue-striped milk jug, the fresh flowers, the plentiful butter and jam and the steaming teapot are all untouched, while the woman gazes — pensive and somewhat troubled — into space. On the other side of the table, a discarded napkin suggests the hurried departure of a companion. The headlines on the newspaper relate to war. The regularity of life symbolised by the regularly patterned, checked tablecloth resting on a regularly patterned tiled table has been quietly but unmistakenly disrupted. Right Roy de Maistre Rhythmic Composition in Yellow Green Minor 1919 Oil on paperboard 86.3x116.2 cm The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 222 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965