Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

one day he received a peremptory order to have it removed. Not even a word of thanks! It was [a] large picture (but suitable for private collections) and the artist offered it as a gift to the Castlemaine gallery trustees... The offer was accepted, and the picture, as we are pleased to find, has a place of prominence in the Castlemaine gallery'.) Two years before this article appeared Bunny wrote a letter to the Castlemaine Art Gallery in Victoria (5 February 1938) and refers to Bathers saying, T feel a great debt of gratitude for the gallery having given a home to the large ex-Sydney picture; and I do trust you don't find it a "white elephant''.' In 1938 the painting was lent to the Castlemaine Art Gallery where it became known as 'The Bathing Pool' and after Bunny's death it was purchased by the Melbourne Club from where it eventually found its way to the Queensland Art Gallery in 1988 under some controversy because of the price paid for the picture. (For examples of the debate see Sarah Follent and Doug Hall, Eyeline, no.4, March 1988, p.36, and Eyeline, no.5, June 1988, p.4; Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 29 December 1987, p.9; Courier-Mail, 30 December 1987, p.3; and an article by Kate Collins, Sunday Mail, Brisbane, 7 February 1988, and Doug Hall's response, Sunday Mail, 14 February 1988.) 2 Bunny first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1888 and the Royal Academy in London in 1890. Living in Paris he later joined and exhibited with the New Salon in 1901 and in 1904 became associated with the Salon d'Automne. He intermittently returned to Australia, and held solo shows at the Athenaeum Gallery in Melbourne in 1911, 1927 and 1928. He also regularly exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society and the Australian Art Association until settling in Melbourne in 1932 to spend the last years of his life. In 1946 (less than a year before he died), the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne held a major retrospective exhibition of his work. 3 E. Phillips Fox, another Australian expatriate painter, is typical of Bunny's generation. Although emerging from a British colonial context, he enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris and was taught by William Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme. As Ruth Zubans states, '... Fox's response to the wider milieu was creative and selective. He absorbed varied elements and adapted them to his own evolving artistic practice' (Ruth Zubans, E. Phillips Fox 1865-1915 [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1994, p.2). 4 The sun bath c.1913 (Bendigo Art Gallery) is a later rendition of this subject, but the grand manner of the Salon with theatrical gesture is replaced with a more relaxed treatment of the women. 5 See Mary Eagle, The Art of Rupert Bunny in the Australian National Gallery [exhibition catalogue], Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1991, p.61, for further discussion about these elements. 6 See Eagle, p.101. 7 This strategy has been described by Peter Gay as the 'Doctrine of Distance'; see Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984, p.391. 8 Perhaps a change was summarised by the French art critic Gustave Geffroy who stated in a catalogue for Rupert Bunny's exhibition at Galeries Georges Petit in 1917: 'One has the right to put a little bit of enchantment in one's life and the painter saw to it that these women, covered with soft and bright shades, kept calm faces, an unfevered breath, the perfect posture of true ladies, proud to play, for themselves only, the beautiful part of fairytale princesses' (refer Eagle, p.101 ; original catalogue reference pp.8-9). This use of women as decorative adornment also objectifies the woman as aesthetic object, or as an accessory or accoutrement, which served its function within the composition as a whole. It is not surprising that naked women in paintings were viewed by many art critics during the period as a formal problem divested of their human and emotional attributes. Much criticism of these works reflects this position, as in the Melbourne Argus's review of Bunny's paintings at the Athenaeum Gallery, of 11 July 1928, p.17. For general background refer to my discussion of the use of women in Charles Wheeler's nudes in Strange Women: Essays in Art and Gender, ed. Jeanette Hoorn, Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Vic.), 1994. 9 Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime, Duke University Press, Durham & London, 1993, pp.118-19. 10 Jacques-Henri Lartigue in his book Les Femmes aux Cigarettes (Viking Press, New York, c.1980) states in the introduction that the '... photographs in this book were taken in Paris during a few months in 1927. Women had just started to smoke. To see them with lighted cigarettes in their mouths was no longer an unusual sight, but it was not commonplace either'. 11 David Thomas, in a letter of 7 January 1988 to Doug Hall, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, stated that 'Bunny used the symbol of the rose in both Christian and pagan senses, depending on the subject of the painting ... The rose in Bunny's art... has several symbolic meanings, with overtones of beauty and elegant sensuousness' (artist's file, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane). 12 The rose may still connote the spiritual as Bunny depicted roses in several other works such as Les Roses de Sainte Dorothée 1892, Descending angels 1897 (Art Gallery of South Australia), Endormies c.1904 (NGV) and the mythological painting Towards Cythera c.1906 (NGA). 13 Zubans, pp.7-8. 14 Zubans, p.7. 15 Eagle, p.1. 16 '... "the Galerie Georges Petit" was an important place and that It had been for long the post which few ever managed to reach. ... Bunny thus had contact with the select world of connoisseurs and buyers who frequented the "Georges Petit" Gallery and who would have been among those who bought his pictures' (Colette Redd in, Rupert Bunny Himself: His Final Years in Melbourne, Colette Reddin, Armadale (Vic.), 1987, pp.127-8. 17 Eagle, p.16. 18 Reported in the article 'The recent work of Rupert Bunny', Drawing and Design, new series, no.1, August 1921. 19 Recounted by Clive Turnbull, in Rupert Bunny, Tristan Buesst & Clive Turnbull, The Art of Rupert Bunny, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1948, p.12. 20 Australian patrons included Alfred Felton, Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger and several of Bunny's relatives. FAMILY AND A SPECIAL FRIEND George Washington Lambert Portrait group (The mother) pp.102-107 1 See Andrew Wilton, The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain from Van Dyck to Augustus John, 1630-1930 [exhibition catalogue], Tate Gallery, London, 1992. 2 Andrew Motion, The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit, Chatto &Windus, London, 1986, p.28. 3 Amy Lambert, The Career of G. W. Lambert, A. R. A.: Thirty Years of an Artist's Life, Society of Artists, Sydney, 1938, p.25; reprinted by Australian Artist Editions, Sydney, 1977. 4 At his death, George Lambert's estate listed great quantities of clothes amongst his possessions (see Lambert Papers, MSS 97/13, Mitchell Library, Sydney). 5 Amy's father, Edward Abseil, had migrated from London in the 1890s to Sydney hoping to continue his work as a cooper. Shortly after their arrival, however, he lost all his money (see Motion, p.31). 6 See Anne Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Art and Artifice, Craftsman House, Roseville East (NSW), 1996, p.59. 7 Motion, p.49. 8 Baptised Leonard Constant, the Lamberts' second son was always called by his middle name. 9 See Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Art and Artifice, p.42. Gray contexts Lambert's art particularly well in relation to the work of his British contemporaries, especially William Strang, Glyn Philpot and Augustus John. 10 Perhaps not dissimilar from Andrew Motion's suggestion that Lambert was perhaps a latent homosexual. 11 According to Amy's niece Dulcie Stout, Lambert's nickname for Amy was 'Mick' (see Lambert Papers, MSS 3449). 12 Amy remained on friendly terms with Thea even after Lambert's return to Australia (see Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Art and Artifice, p.118). 13 Quoted from one of Lambert's execrable poems, in Amy Lambert, p.214. 14 After losing his money Amy's father Edward Abseil was compelled to work as a clerk at the Water Board in Sydney (see Motion, p.31 ). 15 It is not surprising to know that, of all the family portrait groups, this work was Amy Lambert's favourite (see Anne Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Catalogue raisonné, Bonamy Press in association with Sotheby's and the Australian War Memorial, Perth, 1996, p.23). 16 Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Catalogue raisonné, pp.22-3. 17 George Lambert, Autobiography, unpublished manuscript, MSSA1811, Mitchell Library, Sydney, p.140. 18 Times, London, 16 May 1910, p.4, cited in Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Art and Artifice, p.63. 19 Gray, George Lambert 1873-1930: Art and Artifice, p.8. 20 George Lambert, Autobiography, p.168. 21 Thea Proctor, letter to Dulcie Stout, 15 September 1964, following Maurice's death, Lambert Papers, MSS 97/14X. Thea Proctor outlived them all, during which time her artistic reputation and importance came to be fully recognised. 22 Lambert Papers, MSS 3449. 23 George Lambert, Autobiography, p.168. NATURE AND ARTIFICE Emanuel Phillips Fox Bathing hour pp.108-111 1 'Victorian painter returns. Impressionism and "Post"', Argus, Melbourne, 21 May 1913, reproduced in Ruth Zubans, E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Art, Miegunyah Press, Carlton (Vic.), 1995, p183. Most of my factual material on Fox derives from this comprehensive study. 2 E. Phillips Fox, letter to Norman Carter, 10 September 1909, reproduced In Zubans, p.181. 3 The beach at Trouville is illustrated in Zubans, plate 44. 4 This photograph is reproduced in Zubans, p.135. 5 Zubans, pp.131-3 & 143-4. It may be no coincidence that Fox turned to such subjects after his marriage in 1905. Perhaps the fact that he and his wife remained childless also influenced his decision to create loving mothers and children In paint. 6 Zubans (p.106, plate 90) reproduces Charles Sims's The playmates c.1903, depicting a nude child and fashionably dressed woman on the beach; Fox admired Sims's work in the Royal Academy show of 1903. 7 E. Phillips Fox, letter to Hans Heysen, 13 September 1911, cited in Zubans, p.182. Fox mentions size 25 canvases, that is, c.80cm maximum length. 8 For Summer c.1912 and The bathers c.1912, see Zubans, catalogue nos 413 (Royal Academy, 1912) and 417 (Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1912). 9 E. Phillips Fox, letter to Harry Pelling Gill, 11 June 1909, reproduced in Zubans, p.181. Fox offered to paint a copy of this and other works in the Louvre for the Art Gallery, Adelaide. 'STRAPPED TO THE MANGLE': Art, Work and the 'Lady' Artist Vida Lahey Monday morning pp.112-115 1 Quoted in Vida Lahey Scrapbook, John Oxley Library, Brisbane, p.10. 2 Janine Burke, Arts Melbourne, vol.2, no.2, 1977; see also Janine Burke, Australian Women Artists, 1840-1940, Greenhouse Publications, Collingwood (Vic.), 1980. 306 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965