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

46 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s Arthur Evan Read , The cane town (detail) 1955 the work of other significant Queensland artists, including Kenneth Macqueen, Margaret Olley and John Rigby, at the Caltex Centenary Art Competition at Brisbane’s City Hall. During this period, the tropical north also gained greater national attention through the work of Arthur Evan Read. Born in the Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy, Read spent time in north Queensland in the late 1930s. He subsequently relocated to Musgrave (renamed Flying Fish Point in 1961), near Innisfail, where he lived from 1950 to 1956, supporting his painting practice through a variety of occupations. In 1954, Read won the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Wynne Prize for landscape painting with Cooktown 1954 (University of New South Wales, Sydney); the following year, his painting The cane town 1955, depicting Mossman, was the winning entry in the Queensland National Art Gallery’s H.C. Richards Memorial Prize for Landscape Painting. Read’s distinct vision of the region’s humid climate and cane-cutting industry found further expression and recognition in paintings such as North of Capricorn 1956–57 (p.228). At the conclusion of Vida’s Lahey’s survey Art in Queensland 1859–1959 , the artist remarked on the ‘static ideas of the past and the kaleidoscopic changes at present’. 33 Lahey’s comment was prescient given the developments that occurred in the last 30 years of this period. In Brisbane, advances were stimulated by public works that generated a sense of civic pride, and by the work of artists committed to engaging with contemporary practice and working to support art infrastructure and training. Through their efforts, art in Queensland advanced slowly and steadily through the 1930s and 1940s, with new ideas from Europe gradually finding acceptance, and then more rapidly in the 1950s, through the energy and vitality of artists Margaret Cilento, Jon Molvig, Sidney Nolan and others. In the regions, painters such as Kenneth Macqueen explored a new and distinctly modern vision of the landscape and, like textile designer Olive Ashworth, travelled to the Great Barrier Reef to capture its unique qualities. Artists Noel Wood and Arthur Evan Read similarly contributed to an appreciation of Queensland through their work, expanding the public consciousness of the state’s northern regions. Significantly, the end of the decade saw broader recognition of Indigenous Australian artists through painters like Joe Rootsey, whose artworks stand as testament to the resilience of his people and their connection to Country. Through this multiplicity of voices, art in Queensland was enriched and expanded and would continue to diversify over the coming decades.