Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

r i i he possession of an artistically furnished and arranged studio became one of the marks of the successful professional artist in Australia and elsewhere in the 1880s. Certainly the setting up of a studio was one of the first tasks that confronted the Italian artists Girolamo Nerli and ligo Catani when they arrived in Melbourne at the height of the Cup Season in November 1885, after having visited the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius and Bourbon on the way. These 'two Florentine gentlemen', formerly fellow art students at the Florence Academy, wasted little time getting established. By January of the following year the local Melbourne journal Once a Month was able to report that they had opened 'an interesting studio' in Collins StreetWest. In June the two artists announced their intention of holding classes for painting and drawing, along the lines of those found in Continental art schools.1 However, the stay in Melbourne of the peripatetic Nerli was short-lived: in August 1886 it was noted in the press that he was about to leave Melbourne to settle in Sydney.2On his arrival in Sydney Nerli quickly immersed himself in the artistic and social life of the city. By 1887 he had a studio at Norwich Chambers in Hunter Street and he had begun to exhibit with the Art Society of New South Wales.3 Among the artists he came into contact with was the young Charles Conder, who was strongly attracted to Nerli's art and personality.4By the following year Nerli was a member of the council of the Art Society, and at their exhibitions he immediately drew the attention of critics not only through the freedom of his AROUND THE STUDIOS Girolamo Nerli The sitting Leigh Astbury Facing page Girolamo Nerli Italy/Austra lia/ New Zealand 1860-1926 The sitting 1889 Oil on canvas 117x75cm Purchased 1997 with funds raised by Louis Vuitton Australia Pty Ltd and donations from James 0. Fairfax, ao , Philip Bacon and Wayne Kratzmann through and with the assistance of the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation technique and his daring 'continental' colour, but also by exhibiting large-scale figure subjects: The sitting (Queensland Art Gallery) was Nerli's major exhibit at the Society's 1889 Spring Exhibition.5 Set in the studied disorder of his studio in Norwich Chambers, The sitting 1889 proclaims the distinctiveness of Nerli's artistic identity and taste as much as it pretends to be concerned with the characterisation of the sitter. Ayoung woman in an elegant pink gown is shown posing for her portrait in the studio interior which is sumptuously overladen with artistic emblems and objects. She stands on a lionskin mg, holding a Japanese painted fan, her face turned in profile. The profusion of decoration that surrounds her is indicative of the eclectic and cosmopolitan nature of the new-fashioned Aesthetic, domestic interior. The motif of the fan, for example, finds further variations in the studio decoration: on the floor near the bronze-painted sofa is a fan from the Pacific islands; to the left of the sitter is a large palm-leaf fan; and pinned on the wall behind her is a decorative Japanese fan. The decoration of Nerli's studio is self­ consciously artistic; through its vivid representation in The sitting the artist assumes the role of an arbiter of taste. Pampas grass, seen in the bronze jar on the left, is a familiar element in Aesthetic decoration; so, too, is the fashionable interest in the 'Orient' revealed in the presence of what appears to be a piece of Middle Eastern cloth draped over the sofa. Immediately above this cloth is suspended a hand-knotted Caucasian mg. The love of things Japanese is present not only in the Japanese fans but also in the Japanese­ style decorated screens or panels artfully hung with draperies. On the wall behind the sitter is a Japanese-style painting of a bird, placed upon a black hanging scroll.6 It may be an example of the decorative art of the well-known Sydney artist, Constance Roth, who specialised in such bird and flower subjects and shared the taste for japonaiserie.7Nerli's own presence in the studio is registered by what is almost certainly a sketch for one of his works, seen on the wall behind the head of the sitter.8 The late nineteenth-century conception of the studio as a place for inspiration and self-expression, as distinct from being a workshop, owed much to one of the early apostles of the Aesthetic Movement, James McNeill Whistler. However, the exotic pot­ pourri of motifs and objects in The sitting bears only a minimal relationship to the exquisitely refined colour schemes and sparse furnishings of Whistler's decorations of galleries and studios.9Rather, Nerli's picture belongs unashamedly to the later popularisation and commercialisation of the Aesthetic Movement which was well entrenched in Australian society in the 1880s. The sitting, in particular, reflects the fashion for collecting bric-à-brac and objets d'art that Aestheticism encouraged in its later phase. If Aestheticism arrived somewhat belatedly in Australia as a popular fashion, it nevertheless quickly gained a receptive audience among sections of the middle classes in the early 1880s.10The Garden Palace Exhibition in Sydney in 1879 and the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition helped pave the way for the 64 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965