Jubilee exhibition of Australian art

atmosphere of landscape, they employed broken colour, thus avoiding dead tone, and watercolourists, he has added the Central Australian landscape, once only the hearsay of by skilful brush drawing kept the form and enhanced the play o f light. T o the general the explorer, to our repertory. practice o f the day it came as a veritable revolution. Portraiture is a universal art, a n art of the studio, and though we recognise a t once Genius will always find its feet and a way out, and if ever that over-used word can be the idiosyncrasy of each national school, whether it be the draughtsmanship o f Holbein fitly applied to a n artist it is to the Streeton who painted Golden Summer a t the age of a n d Raphael, or the larger unity o f impression o f Titian a nd Velasquez, the end in view twenty-two; for this is the authentic vision of the native-born, untrammelled by thought is the same---the attainment o f the likeness o f man. o f any other land or picture. T h e unity o f impression is absolute, and the eye passes from Studying for the most p a r t in Paris, our Australian portraitists founded their practice the foreground shadow o f late afternoon to the burnt grasses and gums on the rise, to that on some master o f their choice. FDr Longstaff, Ramsay and \ l e l d r um it was Velasquez, cool river hollow and the distant ranges, without a pause. There is an indefinable poetry for Lambert, \Ianet and Bronzjno in this elegy to declining day, a thing unique and incomparable for so long as the goid For many years Long-staff was the representative- Australian portrait painter. H e had lingers in its paint. (Unfortunately, this painting is not included in the Exhibition.) won the first Australian travelling scholarship with Breaking the JVews, a mining incident I n 1890 Streeton joined Roberts in Sydney and painted Fire's On, the Cremorne Pastoral, true to character a nd possessing emotional interest, a n d went to Paris to study, a nd later a n d the three Hawkesbuiys—always with increase of insight a n d capacity. T h e Pastoral, to Spain to copy Velasquez. His Lady in Black, with its exquisitely modelled face and —his best harbour piece—was painted from their camp a nd is one o f his happiest works. hands, was pronounced by Henley the most distinguished portrait in the Academy o f its T h e graceful group o f trees is exquisitely placed, and the sparkle and radiating light seem year. This, a n d the lovely heads o f his wife, o f Henry Lawson—painted in five hours--- and a reflection o f those carefree years. The Purple J'ioon's Transparent Might is a culmination, the brilliant portrait o f Mrs. Broomfield, represent his handling a t its best a n d his the aggregate o f Streeton's power to grasp a great reach o f country dominated by summer sympathetic grasp o f character. We associate Rupe r t Bunny a nd Phillips Fox rather with heat and the merciless light o f high noon. Mr. J. R. McGregor's Hawkesbury is a lovelier France than with Australia, though Fox painted some admirable portraits here distin picture, b u t in hard realism Streeton never surpassed this masterpiece which closes his guished for atmospheric values , , a departure from classic tradition which links them with first Australian period, the portraiture o f Fantin-Latour; a n d both painted admirable nudes in natural settings. McCuhbin, though he worked with Streeton and Roberts, occupies a distinct and Fox's Art Students is the finest study in grey we possess, though later his passion for colour different plane in both sentiment a n d style. He was attracted by the grey-day bush a nd dominated his work, a nd the paintable world became a colour sensation. Bunny's two figure subjects that had their analogue in the stories o f Henry Lawson---- the swaggie great canvases o f ladies bathing, that a dd a grace to the Luxembourg a n d Sydney Down On His Luck and The Bush Burial. They complement admirably the sunlit figure Galleries, are superbly painted and not to be followed in the a r t o f their time. His French subjects o f Roberts. landscapes also reveal the grace o f his aristocratic mind. Making innumberable studies in the sheds of shearers a t work, Roberts painted The Golden Hugh Ramsay's death a t the age o f twenty-nine robbed Australia o f a great painter. Fleece and Shearing the Rams. H e was six weeks on the roads with drovers to get the material His fine draughtsmanship mastery o f paint, and unaffected point of view proclaimed for his masterpiece, The Breakaway, in which the dry hillside bleaching in the sun, thc the born portraitist, and in The Sisters his art reached a summit that has yet to be sur- dusty road, the dogs rolled over by the rush of sheep to the waterhole, all unite naturally passed. Lambert, our greatest draughtsman with the point, was possessed by a Renais- in a great picture which is the apotheosis o f 'Clancy o f the Overflow.' His last composi- sance ambition to excel in all media, including sculpture. H e based all his work on a lion was Bailed Up, a n incident once too common in colonial days and reconstructed searching study o f form, and is well represented by The White Glove and Flower Piece; the under the guidance o f Bates, the driver who had been held up by the bushranger:;. latter in the quality o f its paint recognises no modern rival, Meidrum's Portrait of, His I t was on Roberts' hands for thirty-two years, yet was everywhere pronounced a Mother and A French Peasant are two o f his finest works, profoundly charactered and masterpiece when it was recently exhibited in the United States, where it excited a n painted with reverence a nd subtle skill, and, with The Brothers, by George Coates, Clewin interest in Australia that must remain for us a source o f pride. O f single masterly pictures Harcourt's portrait o f Mrs. Hugo Mayer, and the best o f McInnes the era o f portraiture by contemporary artists detached from the Impressionist movement, Tranquil Wintir, that coincides with the Streeton-Rol)erts period closes. by Walter Withers, is a beautiful a nd individual work; and Moonrise, by David Davies, I n black-and-white Konody noted long ago that Australians always played a leading a masterpiece that differs from all other twilights, in that, without the aid o f chiaroscuro, role, due to the stimulus o f Phil May's work in the Sydney Bulletin. Bateman a nd Low in the weight o f the earth deserted by the sun is suggested by some wizardry o f paint, humour, Will Dyson with his wa r cartoons and splendid lithographs o f the A.I.F., and O f the latecomers, Gruner was a t his best in a small canvas like Morning Light, where No rman Lindsay with his illustrations to Petronius and Villon, are the outstanding exemplars his slight draughtsmanship is not evident, as it is in his big canvases, which are thinly o f the Cinderella o f the Arts. T h e latter came early to a mastery of that difficult instru- painted and already darkening; and Will Ashton, always happiest in Europe, and par- ment the pen, and The Argument, drawn from the third book o f Rabelais, his most masterly ticularly in painting Paris streets and the Seine, still made a considerable contribution to pen-drawing, is charged with fine characterisation, phantasy, a nd true Rabelaisian Australian landscape in his snowscapes of Kosciusko. \Vith Heysen the Streeton-Roberts humour. era closes. He has added, like LamLert, the constancy o f the draughtsman to paint, and I t is well for Us to remember that the original artist is a discoverer, a path-finder, and his mastery of the gum is due to untiring study. Love o f mother nature is everywhere we owe to his V5Ofl a Closer acquaintance with the life o f our country, and particularly apparent in his sheep a nd cattle pieces and the variety o f farming life. First among our its landscape—for the portrait o f a Country is not to be caught in a day. 14 15