Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Ir Iw 1- I ELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. r The sea and Australia's BRITISH painting is often presented apologetically, as if too inferior to British literature, to be offered to foreigners. The only period about which they are confident of having achieved interna- tional excellence - apart from the present day sculp- ture of Caro & Co.-is the Romantic Period, with Turner at its centre. Last year, when a couple of American museums did an important exhibition called Romantic Art In Britain," it covered the century 1780 to 1800. Australia was claimed as British territory in 1770 and first settled in 1788, so our origins and most of our first hundred years lie within the Romantic Per- iod. The second hundred years of Australian life, be- ginning in the 18808 and hence the second hundred years of Australian art, were rather nationalistic. The country became self- sufficient politically, econ- omically and artistically, or at least the combination of Australia and Britain was self-sufficient. We became rather self- centred and narrow. We looked inland. Art WITH DANIEL THOMAS Today, with our second hundred years nearly com- pleted, we need many other countries besides Britain. We need Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and the Uni- ted States. We are more open to the outside vorld than we have been for a long time. And thisIs a return to the situation which existed in our first hundred years. We were very interna- tional then. We had close links with India (for a while our church affairs were under the Diocese of Calcutta). Owners We had clop, links with New Zealand even owning it for a while till it Was fully established. With New Zealand we also shared a very profit- able offshore oil industry- it was whales - which brought many Yankees to our shores, We had links with both North West America, to which the Alaskan fur -traders often sailed via Sydney, and with Chile to which we sent. coal from Newcastle. We had very busy contacts with China for, curiously, It was often easier to sail to Can- ton via Sydney than thr sugh Indonesia. When steam, superseded sail, our internationalism faded, and simultaneously our art (and perhaps our life) became less romantic. Some of the principal ro- mantic experiences, and the themes of romantic art, are concerned with the sea, and more particularly with the sea and the wind . . . which means sailing ships, not steamers which are In- dependent of wind. If sheep, or drought - stricken inland make a typical Australian painting after the 1880s, before that it is whales spouting blood amongst storm -tossed sail, or the infinite emptiness of the ocean. For a long time Austra- lia was a few islands on the edge of a continent. If the Blue Mountains took so long to get crossed it may not have been because they were difficult but simply because the inland was irrelevant. What need was there for the inland when Sydney was intended only to pro- vision and repair ships proceeding to Canton, Nootka Sou= or the Bay of Islands? Events A voyage to the South Seas-that is, to the end of the earth-is a roman- tic theme in itself, and this stopping is exactly what Captain which were islands-Tahiti, Cook's voyages were. On one of them he discovered Australia. If one doubts that these voyages were experienced as romantic events one only has to look at the paintings their offi- cial artists produced. William Hodges enjoys painting ships threatened by tropical waterspouts or Antarctic icebergs. He chose to paint primi- tive Easter Island idols In theatrical stormy light. He painted Polynesian war - boats, and an attempted massacre. Later, there was the death of Captain Cook himself at Hawaii to be painted. Later again, William Westall took the pleasure of actually experiencing a wreck, and malting it. It is significant that some remembered, accounts of a South Sea Map of Romantics exploration seem to have inspired Coleridge's great romantic poem, "The Ancient Mariner." Soon exploration gave way to a kind of tourism. It may not have been comfortable, but previously It had been Impossible, and when artists like the Dan- fells and Chinnery made their own way to India and China, or Edward Lear and J. F. Lewis to Egypt and the Levant, or Augus- tus Earle and Conrad Mar- tens to Australia and the Pacific, they must have felt pretty much the jet set. Earle seems positively to have relished being aban- doned by his ship on a tiny South Atlantic Island. The taste for sea and sail is also a taste for islands. And If Rio de Janeiro and Sydney were not exactly on *islands, they were treated, and painted, as if they were no different from the other principal Bay of Islands (New Zea- land), Hawaii, Hong Kong. Terra del Fuego, Tasmania Not all artists of tht romantic period were trav- ellers to the end of the world but the majority travelled somewhere in- cluding the two greatest Delacrolx to Africa .. , Turne constantly to Switzer's= and Venice. Travels If the artists stayed a' home they became time travellere, preferring thi past (usually the medleys past) to the present o their own country. Or they travelled int( Inner worlds of poetry am imagination, like Fusel, and Blake. The romantic world way the one that brought Aus- tralia into existence. Nov that we are again much involved with Asia and th. Pacific we can better tip- pree)ate the wide-rangint internationalism of ou: origins.