Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

RESTLESS MIND, STILL LIVES A. M. E. Bale Leisure moments Pat Hoffie " P «rom a contemporary perspective, ' A. M. E. Bale's painting Leisure ^ moments 1902 (Queensland Art Gallery) suggests fascinating insights into the relationships between women engrossed in their own focus. Each of these women seems insular, contained, involved in private study or musing. Yet a thread of connection weaves between them, building a certain tension in the otherwise comfortable turn of the room. Not one of the three women in the picture appears remotely interested in their roles as subject matter. Instead of responding knowingly to the presence of the viewer, they shun any such acknowledgement of an outsiders importance, and are far too connected to their own reveries to be shifted by the trifling role of playing 'the object of the gaze'. Neither do they seem to be overtly involved in one another's presence within a room that is filled with the traces of other interests: music scores, literature, an easel and a carelessly abandoned paintbrush, chinoiserie and an urn informally crammed with daisies. However, a longer scrutiny suggests that the relationships traversing this domestic interior are more palpable than the bric-à- brac that provides the parameters. These relationships have been given differing interpretations by contemporary writers. Hovering between the objects, connecting them and giving them a meaningful context, is the matrix of emotions that connects the women to their place and time. In the left-hand foreground, a figure sits in half-profile, wearing a red painting smock. Facing page A. M. E. Bale Australia 1875-1955 Leisure moments 1902 Oil on canvas 148.3x118.2cm Purchased 1973 Queensland Art Gallery She turns away from the viewer. This figure seems to play the role of the artist within the work; a kind of little play within a play, where we are made conscious of looking at a painting that is by a woman painter about a woman painter. Or, the subject matter of this painting may have something to say about women painters in general, and the growing self-awareness of women about the possibilities of their emerging roles within an intellectual milieu. In this sense the work can be read not only as a description of a turn-of-the-century interior featuring, as the title almost cynically suggests, women at 'leisure', but also (perhaps more importantly to a present- day audience) it can be read as a painting that is about painting. More specifically, it can be interpreted as a painting about women engaged in culture, rather than being the passive recipients of it, or the decorative appendage to it. When viewed in this way, the implied relationships between the women become all the more intriguing. A cursory reading of the painting might suggest that the artist-figure placed in the left foreground is perched on the corner of the table: neither of her feet touches the floor, and her right foot dangles casually from beneath her black skirt. However, a closer look reveals the impossibility of that situation: the angle of the table's perspective means that she is in fact suspended a good few centimetres beyond the table on which her left hand rests, holding a fan. No shadows connect her with the floor. She remains suspended, gazing away from us into a space she partly screens with the opulent folds of her carmine gown. In part it is the weightlessness and other­ worldliness of this figure that at once invites our gaze and deflects it. She is connected to the other two women in the picture in a single mass, floating amidst the golden brushstrokes of the interior. Yet she is also apart from them; playing the role of both the artist-observer and the observed. In terms of the implied narrative within the work, the older figure, sedately dressed and seated on the raised dais by the canvas in the right-hand background of the picture, is engaged as the artist's model. The older woman turns away from the light, gazing into the pages of a red book she holds in her left hand. The eyes of the artist are downcast. They do not rest on the model, but instead seem to fall on the illuminated figure of the woman seated between the two. Like the older woman, she, too, sits engrossed in her reading. The colours of the large, illustrated pages of what could be a manual or a magazine are reflected upwards to further illuminate her strong profile. The only figure to turn towards the light, her blouse is drenched in a high key that glows between the sultry opulence of the young artist's gown and the sombre shadows of the older model's dress. The bright tones of the magazine page, together with the face and blouse of this figure, provide a dazzling centre point echoed in the hues of the landscape painting suspended above her, in the fan of the artist reflected in front of her, and in the book of music to the right. She occupies the position of the central figure. In an article written in 1991, Judith Rodriguez refers to this figure as 84 BROUGHT TO LIG HT: Australian Art 1850-1965