Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

111 City life 110 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s WILLIAM BUSTARD In 1921, Yorkshire-born artist William Bustard migrated to Brisbane to accept the role of chief stained-glass designer for painters, decorators and glaziers RS Exton and Co., and he would go on to play a leading role in the development of art in Queensland. Bustard taught at the Central Technical College from 1924 to 1933, was a life member of the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) and a founding member of the Queensland National Art Gallery’s Board of Trustees (1931). He served as Chairman of the Gallery’s Arts Advisory Committee from 1931 until 1937 when he and fellow artists Vida Lahey and Daphne Mayo resigned in protest at the Board’s conservatism and lack of consultation. 1 Bustard was an enthusiastic supporter of Queensland artists and promoted the unique qualities of his adopted home through his own vibrant landscapes and cityscapes. An example is this view of St Andrew’s Anglican Church on Vulture Street, South Brisbane, which features an impression of the city bathed in heat and humidity. Central to the scene is the silhouette of Brisbane City Hall’s clock tower. Completed seven years earlier, the edifice was a symbol of a rapidly modernising city and a source of civic pride. The painting featured in the RQAS’s 49th Annual Exhibition alongside Charles H Lancaster’s A corner of Brisbane 1937 (p.113) which, with its simplified blocks of colour and strong treatment of light and shade, represented developing modernist tendencies among Brisbane-based artists. In 1914, the Melbourne-born painter had been appointed to manage the stained‑glass department of RS Exton and Co., and he and his co-worker Bustard were both inspired to make paintings of the dynamic building projects around them. Lancaster’s artwork depicts the canopy of fig trees near the Eagle Street fountain, and the Royal Bank of Queensland (second building on the right) identified by its decorative embellishment. In the year Lancaster made the painting, he was awarded the RQAS’s Jubilee Medal and the King George VI Coronation Medal. 2 He would go on to serve as a Trustee of the Queensland National Art Gallery from 1939 until his death in 1959. Notes 1 Keith Bradbury & Glenn R Cooke, Thorns and Petals: 100 Years of the Royal Queensland Art Society , Royal Queensland Art Society, Brisbane, 1988, p.69. 2 Glenn R Cooke, ‘Charles Lancaster’, Design & Art Australia Online , 2008, <https://www.daao.org.au/bio/charles-lancaster/biography/ >, viewed March 2025. William Bustard , Summer haze 1937