Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

6 Although Williams did enrol at the Chelsea School of Art, he seems to have attended classes on a very random and rather infrequent basis. 7 John Taylor, quoted in Mollison, A Singular Vision, p.20. For reproductions of some of these drawings see James Mollison, Fred Williams Painter-Etcher [exhibition catalogue], Australian National University, Canberra, 1981, and Patrick McCaughey, Fred Williams, Bay Books, Sydney, 1980, Ch.3. 8 The second series consisted of sixty prints and depicted scenes of everyday life which Williams witnessed on the streets of London. For a complete catalogue of Williams's prints up to 1968 see James Mollison, Fred Williams: Etchings, Rudy Komon Gallery, Woollahra (NSW), 1968. 9 Photographs were also occasionally used as visual reminders in the production of the music hall etchings; see Mollison, Fred Williams Painter-Etcher, p.22. 10 In rough biting, Williams painted acid directly onto the surface of the etching plate with a feather. This corroded the metal, creating a tonal effect like that of roughly applied watercolour. For explanations of other etching terms see Mollison, Fred Williams: Etchings, pp.87-8. 11 This was characteristic behaviour for Williams who was highly critical of his own work and destroyed much that he regarded as unsatisfactory. The numerous still extant state proofs that had suffered this treatment were 'rescued' by James Mollison during the preparation of the catalogue raisonné of Williams's etchings in 1968 (Fred Williams: Etchings). 12 Mollison, A Singular Vision, p.22. 13 The brown chalk drawing, gouache and two oils of this subject are part of the artist's estate. One of the three known proof impressions of the linocut is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 14 James Mollison, conversation with the author, November 1995. 15 See Sherbrooke Forest number I 1961, reproduced in Mollison, Fred Williams: Etchings, p.119. 16 John Brack, quoted in Mollison, Fred Williams: Etchings, p.6. ART AND MYSTICISM Godfrey Miller Trees in moonlight pp.244-249 1 Godfrey Miller, letter to Lewis Miller, 10 September 1940, Godfrey Miller Papers, vol.21, Mitchell Library, Sydney. 2 Godfrey Miller, letter to Alan McCulloch, 15 May 1954, private collection. 3 Bernard Smith, Australian Painting, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1962; Robert Flughes, The Art of Australia: A Critical Survey, Penguin, Ringwood (Vic.), 1966. 4 Godfrey Miller, letter to Robert Smith, Queensland Art Gallery, 27 June 1961, curatorial files, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, quoted in Trees in moonlight paragraph, in Godfrey Miller: Works, ed. John Flenshaw, Darlinghurst Galleries & Ure Smith, Sydney, 1965, unpag. Dates have variously been given for Trees in moonlight at c.1948-59, C.1959, c.1955-58 and 1956-59. The recent 1955-57 date has been finalised by the author and John Flenshaw, Trees in moonlight was included in a somewhat unprecedented event (particularly for an artist so reluctant to exhibit and sell his paintings) — Miller's retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1959. Miller's slow, meditative method of working (he is known to have worked on particular paintings for over fifteen years), and his involvement in a potentially endless process of refinement, left him not only with problems in ascertaining when the work was finished, but with very few works (he estimated thirty) which he considered complete. Trees in moonlight was one of these and was included in the retrospective exhibition where it was considered by Leonard French, then exhibitions officer at the NGV, to be one of the three best paintings in the show. 5 For example, Miller became involved in English philosopher John MacMurray's seminars at University College, London, in 1934, and was a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1935-39. 6 Miller joined the Sydney Anthroposophical Society, St Johns Group, in 1940 and was a very active member for approximately fifteen years. The anthroposophical (Human Wisdom) movement, formed around the teachings of the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner in Germany in 1913, was based on Steiner's conviction that modern man needed to recover a consciousness that allowed for participation in the spiritual processes of the world. It based its teaching of human spiritual evolution and the universal order on 're-discovered' ancient wisdom, and involved a body of esoteric and practical knowledges oriented towards western spiritualism rather than the emphasis on Indian spiritualism in theosophy. 7 Godfrey Miller, letter to Miss Freedman, 26 September 1938, Godfrey Miller Papers, vol.13. 8 Godfrey Miller, quoting John Bunyan in a letter to Arthur Fenwick, 14 December 1935, Godfrey Miller Papers, vol.7. 9 Although the 'coloured earth' of the image may also be associated with Miller's response to the Central Desert. 10 The writings of French mathematician Matila Ghyka, one of the most influential advocates of dynamic symmetry, had a profound impact on Miller and he thoroughly studied Ghyka's Esthétique des proportions dans la nature et dans les arts, Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1927, and Essai sur le Rythme, Gallimard, Paris, 1938. He also read Jay Hambidge's Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1920, and Elements of Dynamic Symmetry, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1926, Claude Bragdon's The Frozen Fountain: Being Essays on Architecture and the Art of Design in Space, A. A. Knopf, New York, 1932, and Edward Bartholomew Edwards's Dynamarhythmic Design: A Book of Structural Pattern, The Century Co., New York, 1932. 11 Godfrey Miller, letter to 'Allen', 28 September 1938, Godfrey Miller Papers, vol.13. 12 Godfrey Miller, letters to Daphne Mayo, member of the Godfrey Rivers Trust, 30 September 1960, Robert Smith, 27 June 1961, and Miss Veronica Russell, 2 November 1960, files, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Trees in moonlight had been on loan to the Queensland Art Gallery from around the end of 1957, as a result of an approach to the Gallery from Mary Killen, one of the directors of Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. Macquarie Galleries had just taken down a show of Miller's and, as usual, said Killen, they had been unable to persuade Miller to sell any of the works — the offer of the loan was his compromise. Queensland Art Gallery Director Robert Haines, anxious to get a work by Miller into the Collection, later asked the artist if he would be prepared to sell it. Miller agreed to offer Trees in moonlight to the Gallery for 200 guineas (the sum that the Art Gallery of Western Australia had paid for his Landscape with orange cliffs in 1955). Miller then decided that in future he was only going to sell paintings to institutions or to particular persons at a small price which he would donate to cancer research. He offered the painting to the Gallery at 30 guineas (Godfrey Miller, letter to Robert Haines, 21 July 1959). Haines arranged for the Godfrey Rivers Trust Fund to finance the purchase. Daphne Mayo, in expressing her delight that the painting was to enter the Gallery, noted that 'there is only one other abstract work in the collection' (Daphne Mayo to Godfrey Miller, 29 September 1960, Godfrey Miller Papers, ML MSS 1005/10). 13 Godfrey Miller, letter to Eric Westbrook, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 7 January 1960, Godfrey Miller Papers, vol.10, 14 Deborah Edwards, conversation with John Olsen, 20 November 1995. 15 Rudolf Steiner,' The Sensible-Supersensible in Its Realisation through Art', public lecture, 17 February 1918, Munich, trans. Roger McHugh, Anthroposophical Society, Sydney. 16 Claude Bragdon, The New Image, London, 1928, p.122. 17 Godfrey Miller, letter to Laurie Thomas, 20 November 1955, curatorial file, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 18 Roger de La Fresnaye, 'Paul Cézanne', in 'Poème et Drame' 1913, cited in John Golding, Cubism: A Flistory and an Analysis, 1907-1914, Faber, London, 1959, p.77. NAMATJIRA IN THE GUISE OF AN ELDER STATESMAN William Dargie Portrait of Albert Namatjira pp.250-253 1 See, for example, Namatjira's father who faces the camera obviously on request, but with his eyes closed, in The Fleritage of Namatjira: The Watercolourists of Central Australia, eds Jane Hardy, J. V. S. Megaw & M. R. Megaw, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1992, fig.1.12. In Axel Poignant's 1946 photograph of Albert Namatjira standing beside his seated wife, there is direct eye contact; however, as this was one of many stills shot during a film, there would not have been the consideration given to a portrait pose. 2 In 1950 Namatjira bought land in Alice Springs. However, the Northern Territory government refused to allow transfer of the land title to him. In 1957 Namatjira was granted Australian citizenship by being excluded from the Northern Territory register of 'full-blood' Aboriginal wards. The following year he was imprisoned for supplying alcohol to Aborigines, who were not citizens. See Hardy, Megaw & Megaw (eds), Chapters XIX-XX. 3 Dargie: 50 Years of Portraits, Gallery 499, Roy Morgan Centre, Melbourne, 1985. 4 Sydney Morning Herald, 15 May 1957, Adelaide News, 23 May 1957, amongst press clippings in acquisition file, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. 5 Ian Burn, 'Is art history any use to artists?', Art Network, no.15, Autumn 1985, p.11. [The full names of the artists have been added to the quotation.] 6 Sir William Dargie, quoted in 'A conversation with Bill Dargie', in Dargie: 50 Years of Portraits, 1985, n.p. 7 Sir William Dargie, conversation with the author, 21 December 1996. Percy Leason, The Last of the Victorian Aborigines — An Exhibition of Portraits [exhibition catalogue], Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, 1934. Leason kept a diary when he went to Lake Tyers to record his impressions of each sitter. He made an entry in the 1934 diary in the 1950s, when he was forced to defend these paintings against the jibes of 'mere anthropology', by emphatically arguing that his approach 'expressed] no concepts'; see Percy Leason Papers, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. William Johnson is described in the exhibition catalogue as: 'Born at Lake Tyers 1860; son of Larry Johnson, of Orbost, and Kitty, of Cunningham; married Maggie McDougall; father of Robert, Violet and Ada; is an expert canoemaker and one of the few who can still practise the old crafts and speak the Lakes dialect. Living at Lake Tyers'. 8 Sir William Dargie, interview with Hazel de Berg, February 1960, Oral History Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra. 9 John Brack, Portrait of Fred Williams 1979-80 (The Art Gallery of New South Wales); Fred Williams, Portrait of John Brack 1979-80 (private collection). 10 Sir William Dargie, telephone conversation with the author, 21 December 1996. NORTH OF CAPRICORN Arthur Evan Read and Ray Crooke pp.254-257 1 For Moorehead's description of Tahiti before Cook, see Alan Moorehead, Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966, p.2l. BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965