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

Margaret Cilento , The immigrants (detail) 1951, reworked 1952 Margaret Cilento , House at Annerley Junction (detail) 1951 Daphne Mayo , Olympian , c.1946, cast after 1958 Many other Queensland artists shone under the state’s distinctive light, and some from interstate also made meaningful impacts here. There were significant Queensland chapters in the careers of Charles Blackman and Nolan who, in addition to his ‘Drought photographs’, is represented by a major new acquisition through The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust, Escaped convict 1948 (pp.14, 163). A complementary selection of photography from the era further contextualises the paintings in ‘Under a Modern Sun’. These images of industrialised cities and booming regional industries not only opened a window on changing lifestyles and landscapes, but also evolved new ways of depicting them. Simultaneously, a rich vein of decorative arts emerged in Queensland, from the textiles of Olive Ashworth and Cotje Reydon to the exquisitely shaped earthenware vessels of Agnes Barker, Carl McConnell and others. Daphne Mayo, whose monumental tympanum for the Brisbane City Hall is one of the era’s defining public artworks, is represented by the quintessentially Modernist Fat man 1940 (p.254) and her Olympian c.1946, cast after 1958, which evokes classical statuary in the style of French Modernist sculptors Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau. While both works were sculpted during the years Mayo spent in Sydney, they are included here in recognition of the vital role she played in shaping the development of art in Queensland, both through her own work and her advocacy. Taken together, the works in ‘Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s’ reflect the many different ways in which Modernism influenced art in Queensland, from one end of the state to the other. Distinct from its southern and international counterparts, Modernism in Queensland was slow to be embraced by Brisbane’s more conservative animate Pablo Picasso’s early 1920s neoclassical period. Its two figures seem momentarily distracted, pressed into a shallow shelf of space where the beach begins, perhaps reflecting on what lies ahead in their new home. With planar, folded shifts of colour between beach, sea and sky, Cilento lends great dignity and gravitas to her protagonists (modelled on the artist’s brother and his friend). In contrast, as if to illustrate the breadth of her understanding of the pictorial licence Modernism granted, Cilento’s Study for ‘Street in Spring Hill’ 1953 (pp.21, 144), with its jostling timber-and-tin cottages, immediately summons up the riotous energy and bursts of colour that animate the townscapes of School of Paris painter Chaïm Soutine. Joe Alimindjin Rootsey, of the Ama Wuriingu clan, painted watercolours of his Barrow Point Country in the far north of the state. The first Aboriginal artist known to attend art school, Rootsey was perhaps inevitably dubbed ‘Queensland’s Namatjira’, yet his distinctly tropical palette and freer brushwork declared his individuality. (Wakooka, inland from Barrow Point) 1959 demonstrates his command of the watercolourist’s wet-on-wet technique, enabling him to blend colours until they appeared to bloom on the paper, perfectly embodying his Country in the wet season. Douglas Annand also worked in watercolour in the far north when temporarily based there as a camouflage artist during World War Two. Annand drew on his remarkable career as a graphic designer when he made works such as Thursday Island pub 1943. Like Lahey and Macqueen, Annand uses a dynamic compositional rhythm and crisply delineated colours to distil the light‑drenched north’s heat and humidity. Joe Rootsey , (Wakooka, inland from Barrow Point) (detail) 1959 Douglas Annand , Thursday Island pub (detail) 1943