Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

10 Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe was following an established British tradition. From the 1760s, watercolours had been exhibited at the Royal Academy alongside oil paintings, and during the Romantic period watercolour artists were in the forefront of the aesthetic response to nature. In the hands of artists of the calibre of J. M. W. Turner and John Sell Cotman, the medium attained a new stature. In addition, watercolours had long been used by botanists, ornithologists and travellers as a convenient and effective means of recording scientific and topographical details. See Lionel Lambourne, English Watercolours Daybook, Alan Hutchinson Publishing Co. Ltd, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, n.d., unpag. 11 The local soil, a sandy loam, produced hakeas, ericas, grevilleas and callistemons, after rain (information courtesy Isabel Hoch). 12 Alan Mayne, An Italian traveller in the Antipodes: An historical rite of passage', in Travellers, Journeys, Tourists, Australian Cultural History, no.10, 1991, p.60. 13 '[B]y 1884 ... drought had an iron grip ... [and] stock losses were heavy.' See 'Decline of a mighty empire — Alpha Station part of Australian history’, Queensland Country Life, 11 June 1992, p.37. 14 Queensland Art Gallery Society member Patricia Mitchell identified the dogs depicted in this image as kangaroo dogs, which were bred specifically for the purpose of kangaroo hunting. This breed is also featured in the stained glass window in the Queensland Art Gallery's Australian Art Collection; see Rodney James, 'Taste and the late-colonial Brisbane residence', in Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850-1965, Queensland Art Gallery Collection, eds Lynne Seear &Julie Ewington, Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 1998, p.40. 15 Letter from Sylvia Stevenson, granddaughter of Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe, 12 January 1991, artist's files, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 16 All of the Neville-Rolfe children of Harriet Jane's generation received an annuity. See Gunther, p.135. 17 After being shown in London in 1959 to celebrate the centenary of Queensland, the works were gifted to the Queensland Art Gallery by the artist's son, Major Clement Ingleby, in 1964. These paintings do not represent Neville-Rolfe's entire oeuvre, but are a site-specific group from a larger body of European works which remain with her family. In a letter to the author dated 17 November 1997, Peter Stevenson, great grandson of Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe, states: 'the collection of watercolours was originally divided between my grandfather (my mother's father) and my great aunt. My grandfather gave all of the ones which he retained to your gallery and my great aunt retained hers and they came to my mother and subsequently to my brother and myself'. A SENSE OF PLACE: Jenner and Brisbane History Isaac Walter Jenner Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm pp.52-57 1 John Hay, 'Portrait of our past', Sunday Mail, Brisbane, 2 October 1994, p.6. 2 See Gavin Fry & Bronwyn Mahoney, Isaac Walter Jenner, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1994, with additional text and notes by Bettina MacAulay. The Jenner monograph was launched in conjunction with an exhibition of Jenner's work at Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, in October 1994. 3 Fry & Mahoney, p.16. 4 The Quetta later sank on this route in 1890. 5 Bettina MacAulay, notes, in Fry & Mahoney, p.45. For reproductions of two engravings (after Frederick Schelbeck), see Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, vol.1, 1883: Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, in 'Historical sketch of Brisbane', plate opp. p.333, and Hamilton Reach, in 'Topography of Queensland', p.369. 6 Bettina MacAulay confirmed in a conversation in March 1997 her speculative belief that Jenner was creating images for the Picturesque Atlas and the possibility that his work was copied by other artists. In light of what we know of Jenner's prickly nature and the dates of the similar works by him, all postdating the atlas, it seems unlikely that they were copied by the producers of the atlas, or were paintings prepared by Jenner for submission. Jenner's ambition and his passion for letter-writing, including 'letters to the editor', would not have allowed such a failure of accreditation. It is more plausible that he used the atlas, along with many other similar publications, as a source of inspiration in his own work. 7 In late 1887 Jenner held an art union; forty-eight of the fifty works were English scenes, perhaps suggesting that these paintings had not been selling as well as his local subjects. 8 Queenslander, 14 December 1889, p.14. 9 Margaret Maynard, 'Aspects of taste: Exhibitions of art in Brisbane 1876-1887', John Oxley Journal, vol.1, no.6, 1980, p.18. 10 J. A. Clarke, 'The Queensland Art Society', Brisbane Courier, 23 August 1888, p.3. 11 Keith Bradbury, Royal Queensland Art Society, Masters Thesis, University of Queensland, 1986, Fryer Library The University of Queensland, Brisbane, p.37. 12 Official Record of the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888-1889, Sands & McDougall Limited, Melbourne, 1890, p.534. 13 Telegraph, Brisbane, 13 December 1884, reprinted in the Telegraph, Brisbane, 15 December 1934. 14 Jenner-Mobsby Papers, Queensland Art Gallery Library, Brisbane. 15 Fry & Mahoney, p.34. Franklin served as a midshipman on the /nvesf/gafor during Matthew Flinders's circumnavigation of Australia, 1801-04. 16 Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1960, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1962, p.85. 17 Isaac Walter Jenner, undated letter, Jenner-Mobsby Papers. 18 Clarke, p.3. 19 'At the time Mr Rivers was, I suppose, about the only "real artist", as people say, in Brisbane. He was a "Slade" man and had exhibited at the RA and Salon, so could speak with authority on art matters...', from Gwendolyn Grant, eulogy for R. Godfrey Rivers, Daily Mail, Brisbane, quoted in Keith Bradbury &Ann Grant, Gwendolyn & W. G. Grant: Their Art and Life, G. R. M. Grant, 1990, p.9. 20 The author's Honours thesis (Would the real Isaac Walter Jenner please stand up?, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 1994) dealt with the construction of history and the role of biography in Australian art history. 21 William Moore, The Story of Australian Art, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1934. 22 Mobsby removed Jenner's own assertion that he had had a host of callings (Jenner-Mobsby Papers). 23 Jenner-Mobsby Papers. INTERNATIONAL CLASSICISTS IN THE 'AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSION IST' ERA Arthur Loureiro and Bertram Mackennal pp.58-63 1 Figaro, Paris, 18 September 1886 (literary supplement). Greek-born Moréas (1856-1910) first formulated the principles of Symbolism in the XIXe Siècle, 11 August 1885, and founded his own periodical, Le Symboliste, in 1886. See Philippe Jullian, Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s, trans. Robert Baldick, Pall Mall Press, London, 1971, and Edward Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 1972. 2 Argus, Melbourne, 16 November 1888, p.4; Illustrated Australian News, Melbourne, 22 December 1888, p.219. 3 Catalogue of the Whole of the Oil Paintings, Studies, Models, Carved Furniture, &c. of Senhor Loureiro, Gemmell Tuckett & Co., Melbourne, 2 August 1907, lot 9; the work was purchased by one of the artist's pupils, Mrs Carrie Templeton, née Taylor. After a visit to Europe in 1901, Loureiro settled his affairs in Australia in 1902-04 and decided to return permanently to Portugal, leaving his family in Melbourne; his wife died in March 1907. 4 In the great sixteenth-century epic poem, 'Os Lusiadas' by Luis vaz de Camões, the goddess Venus comes to the aid of Portuguese sailors in battles with mortal enemies and also with forces of nature powered by malevolent gods. Here she confounds Adamastor — Loureiro's fierce old man — spirit of the Cape of Storms (the Cape of Good Hope) who, as described by Camões, appears to the great navigator Vasco da Gama and foretells disaster to all those attempting the onward voyage to India. (Loureiro, incidentally, named his only son Vasco in 1882.) These cantos of the Lusiads, in which da Gama relates the entire history of Portugal from its origins to the inception of his own fabulous voyage, include some of the most beautiful passages in the poem. 5 See Table Talk, Melbourne, 26 September 1890, p.6. I am grateful to Gerard Vaughan, now at the British Museum, for sharing his research on the Huybers sisters. Loureiro apparently met Edith as a fellow student in Alexandre Cabanel's atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. As Paris correspondent for the new Universal Review, published by Harry Quilter and George Moore, she met symbolist writers and artists such as Odilon Redon; Huysmans's papers document their relationship from 1888. Edith and her husband, the French sculptor Eugène Reverdy, lived with the Loureiros in Melbourne in the 1890s and, interestingly, Loureiro's own woodcarvings, notably decorative panels and picture frames, show even more pronounced symbolist elements than do many of his paintings. See also Patricia Clarke, Tasma: The Life of Jessie Couvreur, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994. 6 Most of Loureiro's earliest important paintings are now in Portuguese public collections, especially the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporane, Lisbon, and Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis, Oporto. He brought a few smaller scale works with him to Australia, one of which is now in the Ewing Collection, University of Melbourne. According to the Argus, 7 September 1886, p.7, Loureiro and Bastien-Lepage were fellow students but in fact the latter had left Cabanel's studio when Loureiro arrived. 7 Argus, 8 December 1885, p.8. 8 Morning may also have been titled 'Ton front dit matin, ton regard printemps', from Victor Hugo's lines to a young girl; see Table Talk, 19 September 1890. For Spring, see the Age, Melbourne, 17 November 1891, p.5, and Table Talk, 20 November 1891. 9 See the series of four articles on 'The New Sculpture' in Britain by Edmund Goss in Art Journal, London, 1894, pp.138-42, 199-203, 277-82, 306-11. 10 Quoted in Jane Clark & Bridget Whitelaw, Golden Summers: Heidelberg and Beyond, International Cultural Corporation of Australia, Sydney, rev. edn, 1986, p.22; and see Noel Hutchison, Bertram Mackennal, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1973. 11 Bertram Mackennal, letter to Dr Felix Meyer, The University of Melbourne Archives, quoted in Robin Tranter, Bertram Mackennal: A career, MA (Hons) Thesis, Sydney University, 1990.1am most grateful to Robin Tranter for additional information about Truth and its place in the artist's oeuvre. For the debacle over the Public Library competition, see also Graeme Sturgeon, The Development of Australian Sculpture, 1788-1975, Thames & Hudson, London, 1978, p.62, and Ken Scarlett, Australian Sculptors, Nelson, Melbourne, 1980, pp.407-8. 12 See Table Talk, 29 October 1897, p.4; 3 January 1901, р. 27 (also 17 October 1890, p.7). Mackennal's profile portrait of Madame Bernhardt in bronze relief, с. 1893, is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. The American-born London actress, Mrs Brown Potter (Cora Urquart, 1857/8-1936) also toured Australia in 1890-91. 13 See Clark &Whitelaw, pp.180-81. Circe was not in fact purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria until 1910. 14 Table Talk, 29 October 1897, p,4. The sculpture was on view for the first time in Melbourne in the window of Allan's music store, Collins Street. Mackennal's financial backers included Frank Stuart, MLA (1844-1910) and the architect Nahum Barnett (1855-1931 ). James Smith (1820-1910), Dr Felix Meyer 302 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965