Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

frequently took subjects from novels or plays, but, curiously, the literary version of her subject came after the event. This was Mrs E. W. Cox's short story entitled 'The governess', which appeared two years later in the pages of The Keepsake, illustrated by an engraving of Solomon's painting.1 Mrs Cox had the woman in black as the heroine, who, abandoned by a worthless husband and obliged to give up her child, had found employment in the very family that had adopted her own baby. In Solomon's scene, the governess is tantalised by the daughter of the house enjoying a flirtation with the male visitor at left while enduring the mortification of acting as nanny to her own child, whose relation to her is unknown to her employers. Whether or not Earles meant to paint a problem picture, Interior with figures has become one with the passing of time, even more resistant to our scrutiny than Solomon's was until the discovery of Mrs Cox's story. Our view of such scenes seems to be dimmed by the screen of historical and psychological distance through which we inevitably peer, and Earles does not assist us with a title or caption such as accompanied Solomons painting in its initial exhibition (and we must wonder whether Interior with figures did at one time bear another more expressive title). Like Solomon, Earles was known to take literary subjects for his figure compositions, and one may yet come to light. At the moment, however, the understated but noticeable communion between the three figures has a significance that is not immediately clear. Such impenetrability sends the eye searching over the whole surface of the painting for clues, picking on both large and small elements for illumination: the gaze of the woman in red takes on the ominous inscrutability of the basilisk, and the man's hat being on the floor provokes unreasonable anxiety. The situation Earles presents has been mooted as being a scene of courtship with the possibility of some autobiographical element,12though it is not possible to tie these impressions in easily with what is known of Earless life in Victoria. His sister Penelope had lived in Melbourne since 1834 when she immigrated with her husband George Selby, and it can be supposed from surviving correspondence that she encouraged Earles to follow her example. Earles himself — a single man at the time of his departure from Britain — married a widow named Caroline Elder in 1866, acquiring with the marriage two daughters and a son. While the use of his own features in a composition such as this does not necessarily indicate an autobiographical intent, since for centuries it has been accepted that an artist is his or her own handiest model, and the lack of a figure-painting tradition in Melbourne would have made experienced models hard to find, Earles may be referring to a real-life situation in which he played the father to one of his wife's daughters, by then of a marrying age. At the time of painting Interior with figures, Earles would have been 51, a credible age for the male figure, and both women are dressed in clothes which, while not as outdated as has been suggested,13are not in the height of fashion, indicating a well- placed family without pretensions, such as the artist established for himself in his new homeland. The woman with whom the male figure converses could be twenty or even thirty years younger than he; she who watches from the right appears to be more similar in age to the man than to the woman in blue, casting her in the probable role of wife to the male figure and mother to the woman in blue. The ring that the young woman hesitantly turns on her finger, her air of doubt and deference, and the distance kept by the putative mother, all combine to make it possible that Earles tells here a story of young engagement followed by doubt and hesitation and a father's counsel giving pause for thought. Though such a story would have been an acceptable subject to Earless audience, it would have been less welcome if it were autobiographical than if it were an imagined or observed drama related in the third person: the recollection would have been deemed inappropriate, indiscreet and embarrassingly intimate. Overall, it seems most likely that Earles conceived of a subject from modern life, either from his own experience or from his general awareness of contemporary mores, and utilised himself in the tried and tested way of artists in need of models. Thus Interior with figures, whether more or less enigmatic at the end of the day than it appears at first sight, remains a rare, early and therefore important example of classic Victorian figure-painting within nineteenth-century Australian art. Pamela Gerrish Nunn teaches In the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Rebecca Solomon 1832-86 The governess 1854 Oil on canvas 66x86.3cm From the collection of Edmund J. and Suzanne McCormick AN AUSTRALIAN 'PROBLEM PICTURE' 29