Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Lhote's teaching derived from Cézanne and was more conservative than the work of radical cubists, such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Despite an adoption of cubic form and subsumed colour, Lhote still adhered to representational subject matter — the nude, the landscape, the still life — and practised a conventional post- Cézanne facetting (see Femme à la cuisine (Woman in the kitchen), Queensland Art Gallery). This technique can be seen in Crowleys Baigneuses 1928 (National Gallery of Australia), Girl with goats 1928 (National Gallery of Victoria) and Torso, study in volume 1929 (QAG). In the latter, the cubification of the nude contrasts with the elaborate, flatly painted patterned background. The torso's conical breasts and muscular arms give an impression of volume and space, while adhering to classicist conventions. With this work Crowley is still struggling to come to terms with the more radical dictums of Lhote's teaching. He stressed the necessity for art to contain a natural order of proportion, rhythm and geometry and these lessons became deeply imbued in Crowley's art. It was also at this time that Crowley first became aware of the purist movement led byAmédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) and briefly attended the former's classes in Paris. Returning to Australia in 1931, Crowley became involved with the Modern Art Centre established in Sydney by Dorrit Black and eventually set up her own school with fellow artist and friend Rah Fizelle. Crowley said of their teaching: 'We were united in one belief, the constructive approach to painting, and this insistence on the abstract elements in building a design was the keynote of teaching of both Lhote and Gleizes'.5Crowley had been introduced to Gleizes's theories by Anne Dangar who had read his La Peinture et ses Lois. Gleizes's tutoring asserted the importance of animating flatness so that a new perspective was created. 'Flat planes were simultaneously to be set in motion and made to evoke space by being shifted across one another as if rotating about tilting, oblique axes.'6These ideas were encouraged once again by Dangar who, having returned to France, continued to send Crowley small pocket-sized studies Grace Crowley Torso, study in volume 1929 Oil on canvas 66.9x51 cm Bequest of Miss Grace Crowley 1981 Queensland Art Gallery 226 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965