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

114 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s 115 VIDA LAHEY Vida Lahey is recognised as one of Queensland’s most influential artists. She contributed to the development of art in the state both through her own vibrant cityscapes and still lifes and her tireless efforts as an art advocate and educator. Lahey studied under R Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College and with Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School, Melbourne (1905–06 and 1909); however, it was the time she spent abroad following World War One that proved most influential. In 1916, she sailed for London where she ministered to her brothers when they were on leave from active service and, at the war’s end, stayed on to study. In Paris, she attended the classes of English painter Ethel Carrick and would later credit the few weeks she spent at St Ives, Cornwall, as a student of New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins as having sparked her lifelong interest in the expressive potential of colour. 1 During the 1930s, Lahey and her contemporaries were increasingly drawn to paint images of modern life. She captured the scenes of industry she observed in and around Brisbane, such as the construction of the Grey Street Bridge (renamed the William Jolly Bridge in 1955, in memory of the first Lord Mayor of Greater Brisbane). Building the bridge 1931 is a fine example of the light-filled vistas Lahey painted at this time and focuses on the structure’s curved concrete-encased steel spans as symbols of modern engineering, and of modernity more broadly. Like Sydney artist Grace Cossington Smith, who painted the Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction in the early 1930s, Lahey has used a high-key, post-impressionist palette that reveals her understanding of developments in international art. Note 1 Glenn R Cooke, Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism , Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2010, unpaginated. Vida Lahey , Building the bridge 1931