Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Within a year Rivers was elected president of the Queensland Art Society and, after much political advocacy and personal financial input, he was appointed the Queensland National Art Gallery's first honorary curator in 1895. He stepped with apparent ease into the leadership of those causes that had been Jenner's preoccupation since his arrival. Whether by strength of personality or his enthusiasm for the local scene, Godfrey Rivers supplanted lenner in his own lifetime, and subsequently in the official history of Queensland art. For Jenner the ultimate snub came when Godfrey Rivers and his committee selected works for the prestigious Thewell-documented cultural search for an Australian 'character' during the 1880s and 1890s probably contributed to the chauvinistic Jenner's fall from grace. The devastating Depression of the 1890s caused people to look for an identity that would help maintain stability in a time of crisis. In addition, during the centenary decade, discussions of Federation, the influence of worldwide nationalist movements and the growth of local manufacturing industries began to give Australia a more distinctive place in the Empire. After his death in 1902, Jenner was virtually forgotten by the art establishment and by published in 1934, was the first attempt at a comprehensive history of Australian art.21 Mobsby supplied information to Moore regarding his father-in-law and subjectively edited Jenner's own papers to make him seem exclusively dedicated to his profession.22However, the exertions by Jenner's family to have his name recorded properly in the history books may have had the opposite effect. Jenner had pompously proclaimed himself the 'father of Queensland art' and the persistent and somewhat peevish tone of much of Mobsby's correspondence on his behalf can have done little to further Jenner's cause, especially when it was obvious that the family had much to gain from any upward revaluation of the large 'home' collection still in their hands.23 Nevertheless, there is much that is appealing in the story of Isaac Walter Jenner. The journey to Brisbane of a frankly amateur artist with conservative skills who would lead a popular drive for a public art gallery is, by Queensland standards, rather a grand colonial narrative. The Jenner who emerges through contemporary letters and papers is an entertaining bombast. The idiom he used in pursuit of'culture', whether painterly or literary, was rigidly traditional, and, as many of his Brisbane scenes demonstrate, occasionally convincing. Bronwyn Mahoney works as a research assistant at the Queensland Art Gallery and is currently undertaking her doctoral thesis at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. 1901 Commonwealth Exhibition of Australian Art. No paintings by Jenner, Fristrom or Wirth were among the thirty- two sent to Sydney from Queensland in December 1900. The sublime aesthetic embodied in Jenner's work, in his interest in marine subjects, cliff faces, castles and other motifs still associated with European art, was becoming unfashionable towards the end of the nineteenth century. Though Jenner's urban riverscapes are contemporary with, for instance, Heidelberg School works that also feature bustling ports and towns, the Heidelberg School paintings were of course executed much less formally. historians. These omissions were painful to the Jenner family, and Jenner's son-in- law H. W. Mobsby went to extraordinary lengths to have them redressed. Mobsby's efforts in the 1930s — letters to editors and to the Queensland National Art Gallery, and the various distortions and uses he made of Jenner's papers — make it clear that he was determined to exploit the hagiographie methodologies of historical biography to create a place for Jenner in the annals of Queensland, and Australian, art history.20 Mobsby's historical quest on his father-in- law's behalf was partially effective. William Moore's Story of Australian Art, A SENSE OF PLACE: Jenner and Brisbane History 57