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

139 City life 138 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s VINCENT BROWN When Vincent Brown returned to Australia from England in 1940, he brought with him an approach to painting influenced by European Modernism that was largely unfamiliar to Brisbane audiences. Prior to his travels, Brown had worked for commercial art firm Soden Studios and, in his spare time, practised a tonal realism inspired by the watercolours of Queensland artist JJ Hilder (1881–1916). While in London, Brown’s concurrent studies (1936–39) at the Slade School of Fine Art and, specifically, his lessons with English modernist Iain Macnab at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art had introduced him to new forms of expression. Macnab espoused the simplification of form and bold use of colour, principles that drew variously on the work of French artists such as Cubist Paul Cézanne and Fauvists Henri Matisse and André Derain. While Brown’s paintings from the 1940s are representational, they clearly demonstrate he had absorbed these ideas. In Back of houses, Spring Hill c.1945 (pp.140–1), for instance, he adopted a high-key palette and emphasised the geometric qualities of the buildings and trees. Such tendencies were recognised by Melbourne painter and fellow Grosvenor School student George Bell. In reviewing Brown’s 1945 exhibition in Melbourne, Bell identified him as ‘a modern [who] is working out his problems with acute intelligence’. 1 In contrast, responses to the exhibition Brown held in Brisbane in 1945 inferred an ambivalence towards contemporary art. For example, the critic for the Courier-Mail proffered that: Art lovers may like or dislike his point of view, but they will agree that his work is original and definitely personal, for almost all his pictures can be classified under what is called ‘modernism’. 2 Notes 1 George Bell, quoted in Chris Saines & Sheryl McDonald, Vincent Brown: An Early Brisbane Modernist , Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1990, p.8. 2 ‘Modernism in art show’, Courier-Mail , 26 February 1945. Vincent Brown , Royal Exchange Hotel 1948