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

Vincent Brown , Back of houses, Spring Hill (detail) c.1945 William Bustard , Castle Hill, Townsville, from the North Shore (detail) 1945 Vera Leichney , Brisbane skyline (detail) c.1944 From 1942 to 1944, William Bustard served as a camouflage officer with the 3rd Battalion Volunteer Defence Corps, stationed at Gayndah and, from 1943, at the RAAF Base in Townsville. Free to spend the weekends as he pleased, Bustard embraced the chance to capture his new surroundings and produced some of his most spontaneous works during this period. Castle Hill, Townsville, from the North Shore 1945 is an example, with the striking outcrop at the centre of the composition being balanced by the loosely rendered trees on the right and the lively beachside scenes in the mid-ground, a world away from the war. Dated 1945, following Bustard’s discharge from the army, the watercolour was likely completed from memory and exhibited (as Townsville from Pallarenda ) in April that year, in Bustard’s solo exhibition at the Canberra Hotel. In Brisbane, artists such as Vera Leichney contributed to the city’s growing artistic community as an active member of the RQAS, serving as a council member (1944–45 and 1948–50) and member of the Brisbane Art Group. Leichney’s Brisbane skyline c.1944 is a modest and accomplished painting of the city — the acceptable face of Modernism in Brisbane at the time — and positions the artist among her peers, Lahey, Bustard and Lancaster. Leichney harnessed the shapes and hues of the buildings in Brisbane’s CBD to create a lively composition that is now a record of things past. The large building in the centre foreground is the old Department of Agriculture and Stock building (still extant, though much altered), while visible on the right in the middle distance is the silhouette of the Canberra Hotel (demolished in 1987), with the spire of the Brisbane Fire Brigade Station (demolished in 1950) standing proud of the rooftops. In contrast to Leichney’s vision of the city, Vincent Brown introduced Brisbane audiences to advances in modern art through paintings that sang with colour. For example, Back of houses, Spring Hill c.1945 demonstrates the ideas that Brown had absorbed during the three years he spent in London studying at the Slade and the Grosvenor School of Modern Art (1936–39) and his awareness of the European styles of Cubism and Fauvism. With his brilliant, non-representational use of colour, his emphasis on the underlying