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

216 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s 217 NOEL WOOD Noel Wood found early success as a painter in his home state of South Australia before moving to north Queensland in 1936. He settled at Doorila Cove on Bedarra Island and his paintings of island life quickly captured the public imagination and earned him national renown. The romantic vision of Wood’s isolated existence reported in the press, however, was never entirely accurate. In 1938, businessman Frank Coleman established a resort on Bedarra; Melbourne sisters and fellow painters Yvonne Cohen and Valerie Albiston made nearby Timana Island their winter residence; and Wood gradually modernised his modest lodgings. Wood painted Evening, Timana c.1940 during a seminal period in his career that cemented his reputation and reflected his ability to convey the bold colours and verdant flora of the tropics. The painting demonstrates his appreciation for his subject’s distinctive qualities and his ability to capture the interplay of light on form. It is likely that the painting was shown in ‘An Exhibition of Tropical Paintings’ in December 1940, a display that art dealer and future Moreton Galleries director John Cooper organised at the Princes Ballroom in the Courier Building in Queen Street, Brisbane. 1 The exhibition included artworks by Wood and Roy Dalgarno — who had spent the previous six months on Bedarra — and was well received. The art critic for the Cairns Post , for example, noted that ‘their paintings have captured the rich, luscious colouring of the northern vegetation and the hard, sizzling light of noonday’, and remarked that Wood had conveyed ‘the dazzling sunlight of the North as no other artist has ever succeeded in doing’. 2 Notes 1 Glenn R Cooke, QAGOMA research files. 2 ‘Tropic north presented in art’, Cairns Post , 10 December 1940, p.1. Noel Wood , Evening, Timana c.1940