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papers. See Roland Wakelin, 'The Modern Art Movement in Australia', Art in Australia, vol.3, no.26, December 1928, unpag. 8 The word Synchromlsm was a play on the word chroma or colour as well as being derived from the chromatic scale which included notes not in the diatonic scale. The synchromists were, however, just one of a number of groups and artists who were experimenting with colour and music. Wassily Kandinsky, for example, being another, as were the Orphist (or simultanelst) painters such as Robert and Sonia Delaunay, all of whom frequently met at the house of Gertrude and Leo Stein. Sonia Delaunay claimed to be the 'inventor' of Synchromism, and its origins are still debated by scholars. See Gail Levin, Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925, George Braziller, New York, 1978, p.19. See also Martin Kemp, The Science of Art. Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1990, Ch.vi, and John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, Thames & Hudson, London, 1993, Ch.13. Gage recounts how van Gogh had taken piano lessons In Holland In 1885 in an attempt to learn the nuances of colour-tones but upset his teacher by constantly comparing the notes to certain colours. See Gage, p.236. 9 Morgan Russell to his patron Mrs Payne Whitney, quoted In Levin, p.19. 10 'The latest assault on the optic nerves and the conventional viewpoint as to what constitutes pictorial art arrived in New York yesterday in the form of "Synchromist Paintings" by Morgan Russell and S. Macdonald-Wright...', New York Press, 1 March 1914, quoted In Levin, p.29. 11 Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The Australian Years, 1894-1930, Craftsman House, Roseville (NSW), 1988, p.30. 12 The latter painting, now lost, was presumably an Imaginative composition, perhaps based on engineer John Bradfield's initial plans for spanning Sydney Harbour. 13 Opinions differ as to the harshness of the criticism. See: Johnson, pp.30-38; Mary Eagle, Australian Modern Painting between the Wars 1914-1939, Bay Books, Sydney, 1989, pp.43-51. A. Adams, 'Pictures set to music', Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 9 August 1919, p.6; Howard Ashton, Sun, Sydney, 8 August 1919, p.6. 14 De Maistre, quoted In Johnson, p.30. As Mary Eagle noted, there was simultaneously a great interest in Spiritualism, ESP (extra-sensory perception), psychoanalysis and many other phenomena. 15 In 1920 Wakelin exhibited three 'Meldrumlte' works at the Society of Artists exhibition including one black and white oil. See Walton, p.130. 16 See Charles Harrison, English Art and Modernism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994, and Angus Trumble, Bohemian London: Camden Town and Bloomsbury Paintings in Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1997. 17 This seemingly incongruous bunch of people — Margaret Preston, George Lambert, Thea Proctor, Wakelin and others — had all been Influenced by French and British Post-Impressionism and represented fashionable taste, rather than the avant-garde. 18 Nancy D. H. Underhill, Making Australian Art 1916-49, Sydney Ure Smith, Patron and Publisher, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991. 19 Roland Wakelin, 'The Modern Art Movement in Australia'. See also Margaret Preston, 'From Eggs to Electrolux', Art in Australia, no.22, 3rd series, December 1927. 20 Harrison, p.53. 21 Clive Bell, 'The artistic problem', in Since Cézanne, Chatio &Windus, London, 1927, p.40. 22 This analysis was sent to his patron Mrs Payne Whitney to explain the work more fully (see Levin, p.23). 23 Levin, p.25. 24 See Illustration by Vernon Lorimer, Art in Australia, December 1928. 25 Margaret Preston, quoted in Prunster, p.15. A NATIONAL HEROINE Hilda Rix Nicholas The fair musterer pp.138-141 1 The art of Hilda Rix Nicholas', Sphere, 29 May 1937. 2 'Over seas artists' exhibition', British Australian and New Zealander, 13 May 1937, p.10. 3 Rix Nicholas, quoted in 'Women's Section', Daily Telegraph News Pictorial, Sydney, 9 June 1927, p.22. 4 'An Australian artist — Mrs. Rix Nicholas', Brisbane Courier, 4 August 1927, p.20. 5 Rix Nicholas's father, Henry Finch Rix, a well-known educationalist, died in 1906. Her mother Elizabeth and her sister Elsie both died during the First World War, and her first husband, Major George Matson Nicholas, was killed in France soon after their marriage in 1916. 6 Rix Nicholas, quoted In 'Women's Section'. 7 In 1928 Rix Nicholas married Edgar Wright, a well- known grazier who lived and worked at Knockalong in southern New South Wales. 8 The Squatter's Daughter was first performed in Melbourne on 9 February 1907. It was made into a film in 1910 and also in 1933. 9 The first book in the series, A Little Bush Maid, was published in 1910 (Ward, Lock, Melbourne and London). 10 Quoted in Brenda Niall, Seven Little Billabongs: The World of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce, Penguin Books, Ringwood (Vic.), 1982, p.56. 'IT WAS A SIMPLE AFFAIR' Max Dupain Sunbake r pp.142-147 1 From a transcript of an Interview between Max Dupain and Helen Ennis at Dupain's home at Castlecrag, New South Wales, 1 August 1991, p.10 (artist file, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), published in Max Dupain: Photographs [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1991, p.18. 2 Max Dupain, 'Why they photograph buildings' [exhibition review], Arts Review, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1985, p.47. 3 Sunbaker" s early appearances were on the front cover of Light Vision, vol.1, no.5, May-June 1978, and Creative Camera Annual, 1978. The caption In Max Dupain's Australia (Viking, Ringwood, Vic., 1986, p.106) reads, 'The sculptural form and weightiness of this figure has become a life symbol for many Australians for whom sun, sea, the beach and the body are synonymous'. In the 1970s, Sunbaker was often mistaken for a contemporary image. It blended easily with 1970s beach photographs and appeared without Incongruity in 1979 on the back cover of a major catalogue showing new photographers. Readings of either of the Sunbaker images are also made more complex because in the prints of Sunbaker made since the 1970s the image is brighter in tone and spirit, indeed closer to the quality of Australian light, than the reproduction suggests was the character of the original print. Later printings of the image (of which there are perhaps 100-200 made between 1975 and 1992) have slightly different croppings and tonalities, especially regarding the placement of the horizon. The familiarity that Sunbaker now contains Is such that It has been the model for a dozen or so re-enactments for art and advertising purposes Including, most recently, its use as the source for Andrew Stark's banner of The Republican newspaper in March 1997 and also the brilliantly abstracted calligraphic motif in Ken Done's painting Sunbakers II 1995. Done picks up on the correspondence of the figure and the outline of Uluru and renders It in the energetic daubs of Aboriginal art. Refer reproduction of the Done painting in Art and Australia, vol.34, no.3, Autumn 1997, p.294. The earliest of the restaged versions was by Anne Zahalka in 1989. Her colour photograph The sunbather, no.2 (QAG) shows a fair skinned, slightly built figure with long reddish hair occupying the masculine territory previously claimed by the Sunbaker. The restaged versions of Sunbaker frequently wrestle with the way the image, in its public role as an icon of Australian identity, excludes others by gender, race, sexuality or age from the national picture. 4 Max Dupain, quoted (p.26) in Craig McGregor, 'The Devil in Dupain', The Good Weekend, Sydney, 9 November 1991, pp.24-9. 5 Ennis-Dupaln Interview transcript, p.8. 6 Max Dupain, 'Some notes about photography', In Max Dupain, Max Dupain Photographs, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1948, p.12; for Sunbaker II see plate 7. 7 The effects of the Depression possibly accounted for Salvage's other occupation as owner/manager of the Craftsman Bookshop in Sydney. It was here that Salvage probably met Dupain who at the beginning of his career looked eagerly to publications from overseas for stimulus — even If he was to spurn visiting the old world in later life. The two men shared Interests in architecture and reforms of various kinds. After the Second World War Salvage formed a construction firm, Architon, which constructed Vandyke Brothers prefabricated houses for the Department of Works at Bass Hill and for the Warragamba Dam and Snowy River scheme construction teams. He and Dupain remained friends until Salvage died in 1990. 8 Sunbaker Is listed as catalogue no. 17 In the Institute of Photographic Illustrators exhibition at David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, 23-28 October 1950, but there is no way of knowing which version was exhibited. 9 The couple separated In 1941. Cotton does not recall being on the particular excursion to the south coast (information from Olive Cotton to the author, March 1997). Dupain married Diana Illingworth In 1944. 10 Dupain, in transcript of Dupain-Ennis interview, 1991, in Max Dupain: Photographs [exhibition catalogue], p.18. 11 Australia Day Honours lists, Australian, 26 January 1992, p.15. This accolade was used repeatedly in media reports following the announcement of Dupain's Companion Order of Australia award on 26 January 1992 and his death on 27 July 1992; for example, see Geraldine O'Brien, 'Exit an old master', Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1992, p.1; Dupain's obituaries frequently cast Dupain as a master photographer who visually defined Australian identity. 12 Interestingly, in the sequence of plates in the monograph, which begins with a young boy and ends with a rooster, men tend to be shown as active and women as passive subjects; see Hal Missingham, foreword, in Dupain, Max Dupain Photographs, p.7. Missingham was also a graphic artist and was Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1945 to 1978. In 1946 he had made a dramatically angled study of his young son David, as a sprawled nude on Wheelers Beach, entitled Sunbather (reproduced in Gael Newton, Silver and Grey: Fifty Years of Australian Photography 1900-1950, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1980, plate 79). 13 Dupain saw relatively few examples of Weston's work before the 1950s. They shared a common Influence from the vitalist philosophies of the 1920s and 1930s. 14 See Dupain's comment on At Newport 1952: 'I made several rapid exposures of this scene as the lad began to climb out of the baths. I wound up with this linear, sculptural form — the luck of anticipation', in Max Dupain, Max Dupain's Australia, Viking, Penguin Australia, Ringwood (Vic.), 1986, p.157. He made similar comments about Surf race start, Manly c.1940s on p.144: 'One shot only — I had to be lucky and I was'. 15 Refer to Christopher Chapman's essay 'Surrealism in Australia', in Surrealism: Revolution by Night [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, c.1993, pp.216-301, and Ken Wach, 'Max Dupain and the Surrealist Vignette', seminar paper for 'Slip, Slop, Slap, Max Dupain's Sunbakers', National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 16 November 1991. 16 Geoffrey Batchen (p.349), 'Max Dupain Sunbakers', History of Photography, vol.19, no.4, Winter 1995, pp.349-57. The Important Issues on the nature of photography In Batchen's account cannot be dealt with here. 308 BROUGHT TO LIGH T: Australian Art 1850-1965