Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

DANCING ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE Sydney Long Spirit o f the Plains Joanna Mendelssohn n the face of it, Sydney Long's Spirit o f the Plains (Queensland Art Gallery) is an odd painting to have emerged from the Antipodean colonies in the final years of the nineteenth century. When he completed this painting in 1897 the artist was 26 years old, and had not, as far as is known, travelled outside New South Wales! Originally from the provincial centre of Goulbum, Long moved to Sydney in 1888, and became a protégé of Julian Ashton; in 1907 he became Ashtons partner at the new Sydney Art School.2 Three years later, when he visited England, Long was so overwhelmed by the weight of this imperial context that for many years his work fell into that slough of mediocrity that characterises so much of Australian landscape painting of the first half of the twentieth century. This is not to suggest that Spirit o f the Plains was a single flash. Rather, it was one of a series of paintings made in Long's particular decorative style. It was this series that led to his sustained reputation as a major Australian artist, though the works are relatively few in number compared with his total oeuvre, and in his old age he repudiated their whimsical organic foliage and decorative fantasy. Spirit of the Plains is also the least classical of this major group and the most self-consciously Australian. The painting could be read as a nationalist statement in the years leading to Federation, or more reasonably, as a specifically Australian work in a style that was seen to be international. At the turn of the twentieth century in Australia, an international, particularly a British, context was a desirable comparative measure forAustralian art. Spirit of the Plains was exhibited at the Grafton Gallery in London, in an exhibition ofAustralian art in 1898, and was reproduced in The Studio, the leading English art magazine of the period, in the same year.3Such international recognition certainly gave the painting an aura of'importance'. It is an important painting, but for reasons other than international fame. Long first made his reputation as a painter of landscapes with figures, and in this sense Spirit of the Plains is a logical development. His 1894 study, By Tranquil Waters (The Art Gallery of New South Wales), uses the fashionable subject of boys bathing in a river.4The colours are bright and light, there are strong contrasting shadows, and the painterly approach is a reminder that Impressionism was the dominant art movement of the decade. The one clue indicating that Long might have been thinking in a new direction comes in the figure of a boy, standing in the water, holding a pan pipe to his mouth. Pan, Diana, Ulysses and other assorted gods and heroes were popular subject matter in fin de siècle art in most countries, including Australia.5The work of popular poets who used classical imagery helped expand knowledge of Greek and Roman myths. Artists such as Norman Lindsay and Lionel Lindsay incorporated mythology into their work, and under these circumstances it was hardly remarkable that an ambitious young artist like Long should appropriate classical subject matter. Pan, painted in 1898 (AGNSW), is based on Elizabeth Barrett Facing page Sydney Long Australia 1871-1955 Spirit of the Plains 1897 Oil on canvas on wood 62 X 131.4cm Gift of William Howard-Smith in memory of his grandfather, Ormond Charles Smith 1940 Queensland Art Gallery Browning's popular poem, A Musical Instrument'. He also painted several versions of The West Wind [1909 and 1916], again based on a poem, but this time by the more dangerous Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley. Pastorale was completed in 1899 and is similar in subject to Pan, though with classically robed maidens wilting on the river bank, and Sadder than a single star that sets at twilight in a land o f reeds 1899 (AGNSW) is an elongated decorative piece that was renamed Decoration by the artist for his 1941 Art Gallery of New South Wales survey exhibition.6 Spirit of the Plains relates to all of these, but is different in both the subject matter and the sparse elegance of its landscape. Although there is an implied narrative, this is a myth of Long's own creation and so it emerges as from a dream: muted tones and shadows help create the impression of ethereal beauty. The quiet metallic grey tones of the bush landscape relate to Moonrise (private collection), a small study of an evening landscape, signed and dated 1895.7This is the first painting to show the distinctive clumps of trees, starting to move together, like ghosts at night. There are no figures in Moonrise; it looks absurdly empty, a stage-set waiting to be populated. Spirit o f the Plains, exhibited at the 1897 'Society of Artists' Spring Exhibition', was the first major work in Long's decorative style, and a marked contrast from the sweetly lyrical Midday 1896 (AGNSW) exhibited in that year.8In Spirit o f the Plains, the trees of the preliminary Moonrise have been placed in blocks, progressively 76 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965