Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

A. M. E. Bale Iceland poppies c.1925 Oil on composition board 61X50.9cm Bequest of Blanche Louisa Buttner 1972 Queensland Art Gallery A. M. E. Bale in front of her painting Iceland popples, from The Home magazine, vol.6, no.1, 1925, p.13. Photograph by Pegg Clarke, courtesy Research Library, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra E. Phillips Fox 1865-1915 Art Students 1895 Oil on canvas 182.9x114.3 cm The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney painted by E. Phillips Fox in 1895. A superficial comparison might draw similarities between this work and Bale's Leisure moments. Like Bale's figures, the focus of the young women beyond the canvas makes them seemingly oblivious to the gaze of the artist. However, the gracious and prettily attired profiles of the student artists reveal no insights about the relationships of the women, either to one another or to the work they are decoratively engaged in. There is none of the psychological tension evident in the suspended ennui of Leisure moments. Instead, Fox's female art students seem casually arranged like the orientalist bric- à-brac that provides little more than the context for Bale's painting. The picturing of women as ornamental adjuncts to the real business of cultural production was common. In a photograph of the students of the National Gallery School in 1896, the female members of the class are arranged like a decorative border beneath the be-suited male students, who are lined up at the top of the photograph, surrounding the bleached plaster figure of a classic male torso.12Despite the obvious hierarchies suggested by this composition, the names of many of the young women assembled, such as Margaret Preston (then McPherson), Jean Sutherland and Dora Serle, today ring out with the authority and accomplishment they were able to achieve later in their lifetimes. In this photograph, seated slightly to the right of centre, Alice Bale is distinguished by the austerity of her dark jacket amidst the sea of white froth worn by her female classmates. She gazes uncompromisingly at the lens, hands clasped and slightly leaning forward. The stringent attitude suggested in her student portrait continued to characterise her approach to life. She took issue with opposing ideas in her abundant letters to newspapers and in her active involvement in various aspects of the local art politics of the day. It would be a mistake to colour Alice Bale's resolute stance with any feminist motivations. As Juliet Peers points out, Bale was 'undoubtedly anti-feminist'.13 Although Peers is careful to add that Bale made provision for women as well as men in her will, women artists were only included to the extent that they were eligible to use her Castlemaine home; the trust fund for the A. M. E. Bale art scholarship was set up with the terms that 'Preference would be given to males of good character, without age limit'.14 It seems evident that during her lifetime Alice Bale was driven to achieve within the established criteria for success of her time, rather than to challenge them. Her devotion to her father and to the measured order of her home life was matched by her devotion to her chosen profession. Yet the single-mindedness of her career is contradicted by the subtleties and nuances evident in the strongest of her works. In these, the unquestioned assumptions and unchallenged dogma evident in the details of her professional and private life are eclipsed by a sensitivity to the possibilities of relationships not easily defined. Part of the strength of a painting like Leisure moments lies in the way in which the work invites a wide range of potential readings. The movement of the three figures from youth through to maturing years, as we move back into the space of the painting, is complex. The 'facts' that we can glean about Alice Bale's life offer only a framework for unravelling the image's meaning. The world of Alice Bale's imagination requires more intuitive research, and can only be traced through the tangible passages she offers us in her work. Pat Hoffie is an artist and writer and Is Associate Professor, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane. RESTLESS MIND, STILL LIVES 87