Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

their dead babies (Frank Holl, Her firstborn 1876). Chevalier made his point lightly with Weary, and then moved on. Chevalier continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy exhibitions (including two single-figure subjects in 1879 and 1881, Hinemoa, the Maori girl, now in the collection of the National Library of Australia, and Waiting for the ferry, Manilla, in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), but despite long periods when he was well, he continued to be plagued by further attacks of rheumatic gout, which was exacerbated by the cold and damp. The winter of 1880 was particularly severe with, as Edward La Trobe Bateman wrote to Georgiana McCrae, not just 'black, but yellow and white fogs', so pervasive and chilling that in one case the bridal party at the altar of a city church could not be seen by the congregation. Chevalier was so ill he 'was obliged to have a male nurse in the house'5and it was decided that the couple would try to escape the rigours of English weather. Accordingly, from about 1884 or 1885, the Chevaliers travelled each year to the subtropical island of Madeira, off the north-west coast of Africa, spending altogether nine winters there.6 Caroline Chevalier has written of Nicholas exploring 'the length and breadth of the island' as soon as he was strong enough, with 'six porters to carry his painting gear, his tent... and his food supplies', pleased with this style of living and 'feeling better in the great outdoors than in royal palaces'.7 At some time during these nine seasons in Madeira, Chevalier came across, or perhaps posed, another sleeping flower-gatherer and was presumably so struck by the similarities and vivid contrasts with the child of his painting at St Leonards that he created a companion-picture to it, Weary at Funchal (private collection).8This little girl is as healthy and relaxed as the first child was ill and fatigued, and the bright, glowing colours of her surroundings seem to have been made deliberately unlike the autumnal shades of grey and russet, brown and olive, of the scene at St Leonards. As with the English picture, the figure of the child is the dominant feature, and she leans in a similar pose, with an architectural feature again providing support. In Madeira, this support is less formal — part of a terrace wall perhaps — with a grapevine providing shade. The basket of flowers has been placed to the left, so that the diagonals of the girl's arms flow down into the rich fullness of the roses and lilies in the basket. Roses, lilies and vine resonate with biblical references, which are underlined by the serenity of the child's expression, so similar to the features of the girl in the first painting: each girl has the face of a child-Madonna. of muted secondary colours — red, pink, gold, blue and green — about the form of the child has the effect of cocooning her, so that she appears just as innocent but much less vulnerable than the girl at St Leonards, who seems abandoned to the elements. The artist's signature is this time as though etched into the stone, and, as before, is integrated into the picture. The entire work offers a most satisfying colouristic as well as thematic unity. Back in London, in 1887 Chevalier painted one final picture focusing on the single In Weary at Funchal, a crucifix hangs from the girl's neck but her feet are bare, and her limbs and face are rounded; the angled crutch of the first painting has been replaced by a great bunch of ripe golden bananas, and the rose colour of her hood picks up the faint flush of her cheeks, warmed by the sun-washed stone against which she leans. The light from the right indicates that this, too, is a late-afternoon scene and, once more, the narrative is suggested by the details: the girl's costume, with gathered skirt and hood, is a variant of the traditional clothing of the flower- sellers at Funchal's produce market, doubtless the destination of her fruit and flowers. Such a huge bunch of bananas would obviously be far too heavy for her to carry, but her companion, the small black dog, is looking alertly down the track where figures can be made out, climbing the slope between the cactus- plants. Has she been told to wait there for someone to help her, and has she dozed off in the sun? The setting may be readily identified as the Bay of Funchal with its white houses rising in terraces above the extraordinary blue of the sea, and the furthermost bluff echoing Castle Hill in Hastings; to the east lies one of the inner islands of the Desertas group. Highlights and shadows in the yellows and golds of the satiny stripes of the Madeiran girl's skirt and the metallic thread of her kerchief provide a softness and variety of texture, as a foil to the firm smoothness and repetition of the curved shapes in the bunch of bananas. Chevalier's use of chiaroscuro deepens the pink of the girl's blouse to a dusky tone, and the close range figure of a child: Seeking fortune was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887, and purchased in 1890 for the collection of the Sunderland Art Gallery and Museum at Tyne and Wear in north-east England.9 Seeking fortune (catalogued until recently as The emigrant boy ) is of similar size to the two Weary paintings, but this time the central figure is a young boy seated at the stem of a ship, leaning his head on his hand and gazing back at a harbour as the vessel gets under way and the gap between ship and shore inexorably widens. 34 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965