Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN Leonard French and the 'Genesis' series Sasha Grishin y the late 1950s Leonard French was one of the most important emerging artists on the Australian art scene. In 1958 he had been awarded the City of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery's Crouch Prize and in 1959 he won the Peace Congress Prize Travelling Scholarship which took him for several months to China, Indonesia, India and Japan.1He already had five solo exhibitions to his credit and his paintings had been included in significant survey exhibitions of Australian art which toured America, Canada and New Zealand.2Art critics in Australia singled out his work for particular praise, with Alan McCulloch writing in the Herald in Melbourne that 'no painter in Australia is more symptomatic of the general universal trend of modern painting'.3 It was at this stage in his development as an artist that the 32-year-old Leonard French embarked on a series of paintings loosely associated with themes from the Book of Genesis. Autumn in the Garden 1960, in the Queensland Art Gallery, is one of these paintings. The core of this series consists of five works: Genesis, in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, The Garden, in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Death in the Garden, in the National Gallery of Victoria, The Burial, in the National Gallery of Australia and Autumn in the Garden, in the Queensland Art Gallery. All the paintings were executed in 1960, with the first four exhibited in the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Exhibition, while the Queensland Art Gallery's panel was completed slightly later than the rest, between November and December I960.4 This series occupies a central place in the artist's oeuvre. In some ways it is a culmination of his earlier practice as a painter: his emblematic symbols attain a distilled clarity, with the Celtic Cross, the fantastic fish, the elusive rainbow serpent and the rowof burning lights, all possessing a crystalline simplicity. In other ways, the series is a prelude for the 'Campion' series painted in 1960-61 and the 'Seven Days of Creation' series which was painted in 1962-65, after a trip to Greece. Facing page Leonard French Australia b.1928 Autumn in the Garden 1960 Duco, enamel, gold leaf on hessian, mounted on composition board 138.2x122.5cm Purchased 1961 Queensland Art Gallery If in the preceding 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' series the heroic epic was related largely in terms of symbolic ideographs, within the 'Genesis' series there is a strong narrative note, the unfolding of a grand story in monumental images. In the Genesis panel itself, a somewhat awkward mannequin-like Creator, within a mandorla of light and with arms outstretched, orders the separation of light from darkness, and the birds take to the air, the fish to the waters and the serpents to the land. The painting can also be read vertically, from the bottom up, from the beginnings of life in the water through to the highest level of life and the creation of man in the image of God. In his working notes for this painting, the artist observes: The water — the movement of life — the creation of fishes. The serpent — the fish — from fish into bird — from bird into man — man thrusting up — man against the sky alive .5 Words play a crucial role in Leonard French's process of work, with many of the ideas behind the paintings having a verbal catalyst. Gradually the words are painted out and the image gains its own autonomous life. In The Garden, the main elements of the Queensland Art Gallery's painting have taken shape. Two standing figures lovingly embrace, like in that miracle of passion and restraint, the Romanesque sculptured figures at Autun by the genius sculptor Gislebertus.6In his working notes Leonard French writes: Man and woman — Adam and Eve — above the serpent. Eve covers her eyes — reaches out for the man. Design as in a tapestry — figures entwined with leaves. The literalness of the descriptive account is totally subverted by the strong rhythmic articulation of the abstracted forms on the surface, where the heritage of Fernand Léger is sensed in the dislocation of the forms. The geometric panels disrupt the predictable sequence of forms, and the individual visual elements appear as separate entities which can be reassembled conceptually into a narrative. Death in the Garden introduces pathos and tragedy into this Garden of Eden. The earlier luminous greens, blues, orange and yellow give way to a mourning palette of greys, browns and blacks, on occasion pierced with jabs of blood-red vermilion. The artist notes: Reversible design as in a playing card. Man with a shield of many fishes — reversed figure pierced with spear — Cain and Abel — murder in a dark garden. Border in which bird pursues fish — serpent entwined with leaves. Treatment as in a tapestry. In terms of composition, this is the most ambitious painting in the series, with a continuous border of images, as on a medieval hagiographical icon, forming 276 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965