Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

ENDNOTES ANTIPODEAN BOUNTY: A Garden of Summer Delight Henry Short Fruit and flowers pp.18-21 1 Joan Kerr (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p.723. 2 Kerr (ed.), p.723. 3 Fruit and flowers was in the collection of a Queensland family for over a hundred years before being acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery. Generations of brides had been photographed using the painting as a backdrop, an appropriate image with its allusion to prosperity, abundance and fecundity. LEARNING FROM THE FIRST LESSON: George Folingsby and Genre Painting G. F. Folingsby The first lesson pp.22-25 1 Edward John Poynter's and Ford Madox Brown's paintings, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, were purchased In 1892 and 1876 respectively. In the latter category, Herbert Schmalz's Too late 1886 (Bendigo Art Gallery) remains one of the most exceptional examples of pathos gone wrong. 2 The extent to which Australian artists did not rebel against academic painting and an elaborate profile of G. F. Folingsby's academic practices are discussed in Leigh Astbury, 'George Folingsby and Australian subject painting', in Studies In Australian Art, eds. Ann Galbally & Margaret Plant, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1978, pp.45-56. 3 The high-profile artist teachers include Eugène von Guérard and Thomas Clark, both of whom taught at the National Gallery School In Melbourne, and Louis Buvelot, who taught privately and at the Artisans' School of Design, Carlton. 4 Folingsby contributed to international exhibitions including the Vienna Exhibition, 1873, and the Philadelphia Exhibition, 1876. 5 Astbury, in Galbally & Plant (eds), p.55. 6 Folingsby introduced an annual student exhibition in 1883; The National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship was a triennial prize established In 1886. 7 Sir Redmond Barry (1813-80) played a major role in public life in Victoria; he was a Supreme Court judge, first president of the trustees of the Public Library which, at its founding in 1861, included the National Gallery; he was also Inaugural chancellor of the University of Melbourne; as a judge, Barry sent Ned Kelly to the gallows. 8 For a full account of this painting, Beneath the arena 1882, see Dagmar Eichberger, Art Bulletin of Victoria, vol.36, 1995, pp.15-16. 9 Australasian Critic, 1 February 1891, pp.117-19. 10 At the piano 1858-59 (The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio) was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1860 and the Salon, Paris, In 1867. 11 Symphony in white no.l is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Symphony in white no.2 is in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London. 12 Divided attention 1887 (Bendigo Art Gallery) was purchased in 1887 from the fourth annual exhibition of paintings by students of the National Gallery School. 13 Bendigo Advertiser, August 1887. AN AUSTRALIAN 'PROBLEM PICTURE' Chester Earles Interior with figures pp.26-29 1 For a concise account of Earles's career, see Candice Bruce's entry In Joan Kerr (ed.), The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp.237-8. 2 Quoted In Edward D. H. Johnson, Paintings of the British Social Scene: From Hogarth to Sickert, Rlzzoll, New York, 1986, p.164. 3 Johnson, p.189. 4 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 (Melbourne 1875), Official Record, McCarron, Bird, Melbourne, 1875, p.208. Quoted in Tim Bonyhady, Australian Colonial Paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1986, p.97. 5 Ann Galbally, The Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, p.36. 6 Galbally, p.48. 7 See Daniel Thomas, Outlines of Australian Art: The Joseph Brown Collection, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1989. On Boyd, see Victoria Hammond &Juliet Peers, Completing the Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era, Artmoves, Hawthorne East (Vic.), 1992. 8 See Hammond & Peers. 9 Allen Staley (ed.), In Christopher Forbes, The Royal Academy (1837-1901) Revisited: Victorian Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, Forbes Magazine Inc., New York, 1975, p.10. 10 Johnson, p.240. 11 Mrs E. W. Cox, 'The governess', The Keepsake, London, 1856, pp.112-31. On Solomon, see Geffrye Museum, Solomon: A Family of Painters, ILEA, London, 1995. 12 Joan Kerr, in correspondence with the author, July 1997. 13 See Daniel Thomas, Australian Art in the 1870s [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1976, p.78: 'The costume, hairstyles and furniture belong to a period thirty years earlier than the painting'. VICTORIA'S CHILDREN: Innocents Abroad Nicholas Chevalier Weary: An episode at St Leonards pp.30-35 I remain most grateful to Ms Victoria Williams, Curator of Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, and to Mr Raymond Kilgarriff, Consultant to Howes Bookshop of Hastings, for providing me with so much richly illustrative material from their collections. One particular photograph, c.1880, confirms the accuracy of Chevalier's portrayal of the promenade and the flower-girl's shelter or 'glass seat': 'a great boon both to visitors and residents, not only from an unexpected shower, but from the warm rays of the summer sun. They are so ingeniously constructed that, no matter from which quarter the wind may blow, shelter can always be obtained on one or more of the four sides'. 1 For information about these commissions, see the entries for Chevalier in Oliver Millar, The Victorian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 2 vols, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992, and Della Millar, The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings In the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 2 vols, Philip Wilson, London, 1995. 2 See William Fleming, 'Weary: An episode at St Leonards (1878)', Artwork of the Month, Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, October 1995. See also relevant entries in John Ingram, Flora Symbolica, Frederick Warne & Co., London, n.d. [c.1910], 3 See particular entries in M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976; also Marjorie Blarney & Richard Fitter, Collins Handgulde to the Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe, William Collins, London, 1979. 4 See Julian Treuherz, Hard Times: Social Realism in Victorian Art [exhibition catalogue], Lund Humphries In association with Manchester City Art Galleries, London, 1987, p.9. 5 Edward La Trobe Bateman, letter to Georgiana McCrae, 15 February 1880, Bateman Papers, MS 12248, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. 6 'Madeira stands out in the Atlantic Ocean, a volcanic island rising high above the ocean swell. The "pearl of the Atlantic", 900 km from Lisbon, offers tourists a climate which is mild at all times of the year, a vegetation which is subtropical and transforms the island into a garden always in flower, and a landscape, beautiful and varied, which opens out into vast panoramas' (Michelin Guide, Portugal and Madeira, Michelin et Cie, Paris, 1988, p.128). 7 Caroline Chevalier, Nicolas Chevalier, Peintre Vaudois: D'après les notes de Mme C. Chevalier, Extrait de la Gazette de Lausanne, 21 avril 1908, trans. F.-A. Forel, Imprimerie Lucien Vincent, Lausanne, 1908, p.13. 8 Weary at Funchal was purchased by a private collector from Tom Silver Fine Art, Melbourne, In 1985. Silver's catalogue entry erroneously identifies the picture as Weary at St Leonards 1878, but 300 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965