Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

... , .. The Le ader 31 August 19 83 Eight-inch Howitzer, near Glisy, destroyed by premature burst, defective fuse /9/8, •rom Streeton in France 1918. 'Horrible litter of war' Streeton . . . this narrow street, from which I write, is about 400 yds long, going downhill: to the river (and) is called o]Jicially "Dingbat Alley." Ninety per cent of the houses are quite smashed up, and the front to the street yawning what is left of their interiors. The words arc Arthur Streeton's in a letter to Tom Roberts from Per· onne in France during World War I. . The artist's pencil and yellow wash impression of the same scene is included in Streeton in France - /9/8. an ex· hibition orpniscd by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and soon to go on display at the Queensland Art Gallery. Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) is one of the best-known of Australian artists. His name is especially associated with the founding of the Heidelberg School - a group of young Melbourne artists who in the 1880s concentrated on painting out of door.i in order to respond directly to nature. Much~ well-known arc Streeton's war paintings and drawings. o{ which the artist executed I80 in the six months' for which he was an Australian Official War Artist in France. Streeton had already experienced the horror and brutali· ty of war th1ough his contact with the wounded at the medical unit where he served as an orderly. He was to sec more again in 1918 during his two toun of duty as war artist attached to the 2nd Division, AIF. And just as at Heidelberg he had rejected the romantic image of Australia and painted what he saw,so too in France ·he refused to romanticise war with pictures of pliant charges and rccor led instead his own direct c,bscrvalloiis. It was a very personal vision, however, in which the chaos and devastation of war is depicted not so much in the races of soldiers as in scenes of broken, abandoned guns and the Myawning" buildinp of ruined towns. Yet the Streeton images are not only of what he called the Mdcsolation and horrible litter of the war" but also of moments of relaxation, delight and even beauty such as one he described in another letter to Tom Roberts: ... the /mt afternoon light all golden like Au.slralla cat· ches the stems In patches and Is dl/Jused among thLfoliage in most beautiful fmhJOfl. Our blankets arr dry, our news Is cheerful and the dog's dlseast sttms to hl1ve disappeared. Toe Streeton in France exhibition opens on ThutsdaY, August 4, and continues for a month.