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

,r --------- ··.::;., r A The Australian 8 September 1983 A personal perspective on history THE Behan Collection on exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery is a major collec– tion of Australian art with both artistic and historic sig– nificance. .it was built up over the past 30 years by Dr Norman Behan, a Brisbane doctor and a long– time patron of art. ·rhe 100 or so paintings, drawings and sculptures in the show are not the sum of his collection, but those works he lent to Stuartholme Con– vent, where in the 1950s he established a gallery of the "more Important Australian artists". In the mid 1970s for reasons or security, conserva– tion and education, the collec– tion was transferred on per– manent loan to the Queens– land University art museum. Its exhibition at the Queens– land Art Gallery marks Dr Dc– hru1's retirement after nearly 30 years, from the gallery's board or trustees. Dr Behan'• aim ror this col– lection was to develop a chron– ological account or Australian art from the early colonial The Behan Collecllon Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane SARAH FOLLENT days to roughly the end of World War I. In fact he has carried this through to the 1960s, but it is the early per– iods which arc the most repre– sentative and indeed arc the major strength of the collec– tion. Naturally the choice of works was determined to some ex– tent by cost and avallablllty, and as for any private collec– tion, the taste or the patron. Dr Behan's involvement with art has been very much a labor of love, and he sees the collection not just as an objec– tive chronological account of Australian art, but as his per– sonal expression or it. As these works show, his taste is for fig– urative expressive work (there are no real abstract ·works in– cluded) and I suspect he is also somcthinll' of a romantic. One of the earliest works is by Wainwriitht, who was de– ported for forgery. It is a deli– cately modelled watercoior or Sir John Franklin (the river bears his name), in which a few minute touches of white give the features a 1tlowin1t vitality. The dcvcio1lll1ent or our landscape tradition can be traced from the European and British inspired romanticism of for instance, Glover's idyllic and glowing landscapes, and Buvelot's Stonn Near Macedon (1871), to the more impressio– nist romantic work or McCub– ban's Artist 's Studio, and Rob– erts' Kinibilli Point or the late 19th century. There arc Manet and Whistler-inspired tonal landscapes like Lon1tstaff's Cool Green near Macedon. Streeton 's dramatically lit English works, like his Tur– neresque Chcpstowe Castle, made an interesting compari– son with his brighter Austral– ian works in the Queensland Art Gallery collection. Meldrum's Frosted Poplars is ror him an unusually sponta- neous work which captures the vaporous, shimnwring air in the frosty trees. The much later Wakclin, Southcoast I,andscapc (1959). is slightly abstracted, but has the wide vistas and glowing romantic liitht seen in some of the earli– est works. S.T. Gill's incisively carica– tured Old Toper and Kangaroo Shooter (1854) show the real– istic side of early Australia. Among the late 19th and early 20th century portraits arc several small Roberts, and works by Longstaff, Ramsey, and several by Lambert, The formality and tonality or Lam– bert's Regimental Portrait Group attests to the turn or the century voitue ror Velaz– quez art. As in all collections, the indi" vidual works seen here ll'ain from each other so we can ex– perience more richly from their totality than from the individual works. The collection presents a slice of Australian art history and an expcriencl' or it which without Dr Behan's vision wr would not have had. ·•·