Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

6 Sidney Nolan, in a letter of 30 July 1947, quoted in Jane Clark, Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends. A Retrospective Exhibition 1937-1987 [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987, p.91. 7 Jane Clark, p.90. 8 Sir Kenneth Clark visited Sydney in 1949, during the time that he held the position of Slade Professor at Oxford University. He sought out Sidney Nolan and bought a painting from him, leaving a deep impression on the young artist. For an account of this visit see Brian Adams, Sidney Nolan. Such Is Life: A Biography, Hutchison Australia, Hawthorn (Vic.), 1987, pp.103-105. 9 Nicholas Rothwell, 'Nolan: The artist in exile begins his long journey home', Weekend Australian, 15 July 1989, Library press cuttings, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 10 Clive Turnbull, Introduction, in Paintings by Sidney Nolan [exhibition catalogue], Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, 17-28 February 1948, unpag. 11 The painting was exhibited as cat. no. 2, under the title 'Urang Creek'. See Paintings by Sidney Nolan [exhibition catalogue]. 12 Robert Gibbings, John Graham (Convict) 1824 — An Historical Narrative, Faber & Faber, London, 1937, p.81. 13 Jane Clark, p.91. 14 Nolan also used an 1871 photograph of the revolutionary French poet Arthur Rimbaud as a compositional source for his painting of Reid. For a reproduction of the original photograph see Jane Clark, p.38. 15 Sidney Nolan Paradise Garden, ed. Robert Melville, R. Alistair McAlpine, London, 1971, p.7. 16 The final break with Sunday Reed did not come until after Nolan's marriage to Cynthia Reed (John Reed's sister) in 1948. At Christmas 1947, Nolan presented one of the Fraser Island series to Sunday Reed ( Lake Wabby) as a Christmas gift. 17 See Kay Schaffer, 'Eliza Fraser's trial by media', Antipodes, vol.5, no.2, December 1991, pp.114-19. 18 Jim Davidson, 'Beyond the Fatal Shore: The mythologization of Mrs Fraser', Meanjin, vol.49, no.3, Spring 1990, p.450. 19 For comprehensive overviews of Eliza Fraser's use as a cultural icon see Kay Schaffer, In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995, and Chris Healy, 'Eliza Fraser and the impossibility of postcolonial history', in From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp.160-89. 20 On her return to England (so the legend has it) Eliza Fraser sold her story to passers-by in Hyde Park, and was continually asking for public funds in compensation for her trials. 21 Rothwell, 'Nolan: The artist in exile begins his long journey home'. RETURNING TO ARCADIA Arthur Boyd Berwick landscape pp.206-209 1 Martin à Beckett Boyd (1893-1972), the fourth son of Arthur Merric Boyd, was based in England from 1915. On his return to Australia he lived in and restored his grandfather's house, The Grange, commissioning the frescoes from his nephew Arthur as part of the refurbishment. Arthur lived at The Grange with his family from late 1948 into 1949. Unfortunately these frescoes, based on various religious themes, were destroyed when the house was demolished in the late 1960s. However, they were in effect the instrument of Boyd's release from his commitment to the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery Workshop in 1948, and subsequently had an important association with the Berwick landscapes that he painted at this time. 2 The dead tree became increasingly a potent, often threatening presence in both pure landscapes by Boyd and the backgrounds of his thematic pictures, for example, the 'Nebuchadnezzar' series of 1968-72. For further reference to D. H. Lawrence see Barry Pearce, Arthur Boyd Retrospective [exhibition catalogue], The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993, p.21. 3 Martin Boyd, The Cardboard Crown, rev. edn, Penguin Books, Ringwood (Vic.), 1984, pp.55-6; first published in 1952. 4 Martin Boyd, pp.62-3. 5 Franz Philipp, Arthur Boyd, Thames & Hudson, London, 1967, p.60. 6 After his discharge from the army in 1944, Boyd joined John Perceval and Peter Herbst in forming the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery Workshop in Murrumbeena. Boyd remained involved with the pottery until 1948, when he was commissioned to do The Grange frescoes. Max Doerner's book on the methods and materials of painters, with particular focus on the old masters, was published in 1921. Republished in English and translated from German many times since, it has been an essential source book for artists throughout the world for most of the twentieth century (The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, with notes on the techniques of the old masters, rev. edn, trans. Eugen Neuhans, Hart-Davis, London, 1949). CHARLES MOUNTFORD AND THE 'BASTARD BARKS': A Gift from the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, 1948 Mountford Expedition Works pp.210-217 Thanks are due to Dr Luke Taylor, Dr Betty Meehan, Gael Newton and Lynne Seear for their comments and suggestions on this paper during its preparation. 1 Colin Simpson, Adam in Ochre: Inside Aboriginal Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, pp.2 & 5. 2 Arthur A. Calwell, Minister of State for Information 1941-45, Preface [dated December 1948], in Charles P. Mountford, Records of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, Vol.1, Art, Myth and Symbolism, Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Vic.), 1956. Other volumes in the series were published on Anthropology and Nutrition, Botany and Plant Ecology and Natural History. 3 Craig Elliott, 'American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land', Cataloguing consultancy report for the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 30 March 1992, Report no.40 2C, p.8, Rare Books Room, Library, National Museum of Australia. 4 According to Craig Elliott's report, and confirmed in part by private research, current accession records from the six state art galleries indicate that twenty- four works are not recorded for each of the receiving institutions except at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There are eight works on National Gallery of Victoria records, twenty-three on Queensland Art Gallery records, twenty-nine on Art Gallery of South Australia records and nine at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. This of course does not necessarily mean that the works never arrived at the relevant institutions; they could simply be the victims of tardy record keeping or, as was the case in Melbourne, the transfer of Aboriginal works to the Museum. 5 Correspondence from Robert Campbell, Director, The National Gallery of South Australia, to Hal Missingham, Director, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1 September 1955, files, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 6 Art critic Douglas Stewart in the Bulletin, 1 July 1959, quoted by J. A. (Tony) Tuckson in his essay, 'Aboriginal art and the western world', in Australian Aboriginal Art, ed. Ronald M. Berndt, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1964, pp.60-68. 7 Correspondence between Tony Tuckson and Robert Haines, March 1960, Collection files, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 8 Margie West, Aboriginal art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, 1994, unpublished manuscript, p.3. Two notable exceptions were an exhibition of Aboriginal work entitled 'Primitive Art' held at the National Museum of Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria in 1943; the exhibition was accompanied by a publication of the same title. This project was jointly organised by the gallery and the museum and clearly introduced the theories and terminology of aesthetics to the Indigenous material. The second was an exhibition 'Art of Australia, 1788-1941', which toured North America from 1941 and included bark paintings and colonial drawings by Aboriginal artists as part of a historic 'survey' of Australian art; the exhibition was accompanied by a publication of the same title. 9 For example, more than half of the covers for the literary publication Meanjin surveyed during the period 1950 to 1955 feature schematised Aboriginal motifs that were not related to articles included in the journal. They were designed by non-indigenous artists for decorative purposes. 10 Luke Taylor, Seeing the Inside: Bark Painting in Western Arnhem Land, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p.30. 11 Mountford, Art, Myth and Symbolism, p.xxii. 12 Mountford, Art, Myth and Symbolism, p.xxii. 13 Mountford, Art, Myth and Symbolism, p.10. Mountford claims that most of the artists on Groote Eylandt during this time used carbon from batteries left since the Second World War to get black paint, and not the manganese oxide that had previously been used; however, there are conflicting reports on which particular works this applies to. 14 Elliot, p.14. 15 West, p.3. 16 Mountford, Art, Myth and Symbolism, p.xxvii. 17 Spellings of Aboriginal works are constantly under revision. Today Gunbalanja is spelled Gunbalanya. 18 Mountford, Art, Myth and Symbolism, p.111 : 'The mission station used most of the available aboriginal labour for the killing and skinning of water buffaloes'. 19 The precise number is not known. Frederick McCarthy was the first museum curator in Australia to be trained in social anthropology, and in fact began publishing on the 'decorative' aspects of Aboriginal art in the late 1930s, including articles in the art periodical Art in Australia. 20 Philip Jones, 'Perceptions of Aboriginal art: A history', in Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, ed. P. Sutton, Penguin Books, Ringwood (Vic.), 1988, p.172. 21 Interview with Charles Mountford by Hazel de Berg, 1960, The Hazel de Berg Recordings, Transcript 687, Oral History Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra, p.2. The Hazel de Berg recordings were an oral history project of the National Library of Australia, Canberra. 22 Ronald M. Berndt, 'The Mountford Volume on Arnhem Land Art, Myth and Symbolism: A critical review', Mankind, vol.5, no.6, October 1958, p.249. The divisions apparent within and outside the anthropological establishment did not prevent future collaborations. In 1960 Mountford contributed a chapter on Arnhem Land art to the impressive publication Australian Aboriginal Art, edited by R. M. Berndt, which officially accompanied the exhibition of the same title. 23 Berndt, Mankind, p.250. 24 Karel Kupka, 'Australian Aboriginal bark painting', Oceania, vol.xxvii, 1956, p.267. 25 Charles P. Mountford, exhibition catalogue essay, 'Australian Aboriginal art', Melbourne, December 1949, unpag., published as the Introduction, in James Cant, Australian Aboriginal Art Paintings, Berkeley Galleries, London, 1950. 26 Distribution figures supplied by the National Geographic Society Research Correspondence Division, Washington DC, July 1997. 27 Axel Poignant's picture book Picaninny Walkabout, published in 1957 by Angus & Robertson, was an instant success, attracting a Unesco award, among others. Purported to sell 100 000 copies, with over a third of the sales overseas, it was reprinted seven times with the last edition issued in 1972. Unlike previous children's stories, it was marketed as a fine art presentation with a flap jacket and over fifty pages of quality photographic images with minimal text. 28 In his report in The National Geographic Magazine, Mountford described the 1948 expedition as an exploration of 'Stone Age Arnhem Land' and BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965