Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965
A SENSE OF PLACE: Jenner and Brisbane History Isaac Walter Jenner Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm Bronwyn Mahoney Facing page Isaac Walter Jenner England/Australia 1836-1902 Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm 1888 Oil on board 14.5 X 21.8cm Purchased 1995. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Above left Photograph of RMS Quetta taken from Bowen Tee, from Gavin Fry & Bronwyn Mahoney, Isaac Walter Jenner, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1994, p.30 Above right Reproduction of engraving (after Frederick Schelbeck) from Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, vol.1, 1883: Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, plate opp. p.333 I saac Walter Jenner has been evocatively referred to as Australia's 'lost' colonial . artist] Despite his ubiquitous presence within the Brisbane art scene at the end of the nineteenth century, Jenners historical position has only recently achieved serious acknowledgement and assessment.2Jenner spent eighteen years in Brisbane and was a major force in the burgeoning cultural life of the colony, until his death in 1902. Following his arrival in Brisbane in 1883, he lobbied for a public art gallery, exhibited widely, held art unions, and, with fellow artists Oscar Fristrom and L.W. K. Wirth, was instrumental in the development of the Queensland Art Society. Jenner was an untrained artist, who, after serving as a seaman with the Royal Navy, retired at the age of 29 to Brighton, England, to pursue a career in art. Though this might be perceived as a somewhat unconventional decision, Jenner undoubtedly had a natural, conservatively expressed talent and he achieved moderate success in England. His first-hand experience of ships and the sea made it inevitable that he should become primarily a marine painter. As a seaman, Jenner was knowledgeable about the construction and rigging of ships; he also worked as a ship's painter, which included doing decorative work and signwriting.3 It is likely that Jenner would have observed marine artists at work on board ships throughout his naval career. At the age of 47 Jenner travelled to Brisbane with his wife and seven children, and his eldest daughter Mary Ellen's fiancé, H. W. Mobsby. During his stay in the colony Jenner worked tirelessly to secure arenas where artists could show and sell their work and to bring his vision of 'civilisation' to the young colony. Jenner had probably experienced difficulties fitting into the close-knit group of artists in Brighton, because of his low rank, lack of formal education and family background (his father was a blacksmith, whereas traditionally many marine artists were part of a 'family business'). This may, at least in part, explain Jenners migration to Australia — the young country would have offered a new start, somewhere he could create his own place, where his scarce training and his lack of social standing would, he hoped, prove less of an impediment. Jenners artistic output included scenes, painted from memory, of his time at sea with the Royal Navy, images of England, and, more importantly from the perspective of Australian art history, pictures of late nineteenth-century Brisbane and its surrounds. As with his images of England, the Australian subject paintings reveal Jenners two abiding interests — depictions of shipping and the effects of light on water. The artist's treatment of these motifs is typical of his untutored absorption of the British aesthetic tradition of the sublime, which essentially exalted natural beauty. These works in the Collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane from Bowen Terrace, New Farm 1888, Hamilton Reach, Brisbane 1885 and View of Brisbane 1885, adhere strictly to this formula of the sublime aesthetic. They also serve other important functions. At the time of their execution such works supplied the population of early Brisbane with artistic impressions of their new home, in some 52 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965
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