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

223 The tropical north 222 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s Roy Dalgarno , Smoko 1939 ROY DALGARNO Melbourne-born artist Roy Dalgarno moved to Queensland in 1935 as a committed communist, having developed a concern for the welfare of workers in his youth. At age 17, Dalgarno was apprentice lithographer at a Melbourne studio located in the building where Australia’s first socialist magazine Tocsin had been published, and became involved in the radical magazine Strife . 1 Dalgarno attended drawing lessons at the National Gallery School in Melbourne from 1926 to 1930, associating with other left-aligned social realists such as Noel Counihan. This was followed by further study in Sydney with Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo (1930–33) and at the East Sydney Technical College (1932–34). After returning to Melbourne, where he joined the Australian Communist Party, Dalgarno journeyed north. In Brisbane he established a presence among the city’s art circles, exhibiting drawings of the Story Bridge under construction with the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) in 1937 and 1939. 2 Dalgarno formed a friendship with RQAS president Dr JV Duhig, and it may have been with his encouragement that Dalgarno travelled to north Queensland to portray the region’s sugarcane workers and fishermen. Dalgarno started painting in earnest during this period and spent six months on Bedarra Island as the guest of fellow artist Noel Wood, preparing work for their joint exhibition in Brisbane. Organised by John Cooper and opened by Duhig at the Princes Ballroom in the Courier Building in Queen Street, the exhibition received great acclaim. The Cairns Post reviewer noted Dalgarno’s remarkable skill in capturing the hard, glaring lights of the tropics. This is particularly noticeable in his triptych of canefield studies — ‘Smoko’, ‘Sharpening the cane knife’, and ‘Loading burnt cane’. 3 Notes 1 Joan Kerr, ‘Roy Frederick Leslie Dalgarno’, Design & Art Australia Online , 1996, <https://www.daao.org.au/bio/roy-frederick-leslie-dalgarno/biography/> , viewed December 2024. 2 Glenn R Cooke, QAGOMA research files. 3 ‘Tropic north presented in art’, Cairns Post , 10 December 1940, p.1.