Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

"TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W. ? r, I I !I 1911 Guide to Victoria THERE are half a dozen small art museums in Victoria, all worth visiting. Australian art is the usual reason for visiting them, but there are a few stray surprises in European and Asian art. Contemporary Australian art is not what you go there for, though It's true that prizes have brought some good contemporary sculptures to Madura, and some paintings to Ballarat and Geelong. On the whole it's the conservative contemporaries that got bought, un- less a professional staff exists. Only recently have some galleries appointed a director. Ballarat is best rpIIIRTY years before it had a director, one committee mein ber had taste. Not only did he know a good picture when he saw one, he also frankly enjoyed romantic pictures of lovely ladies, dressed up, and out in the sun. Thus McCubbin, Roberts, John Mather, Charles Conder, and-one of this artist's very beet works -- Phillips Fox. Rupert Bunny's ladies are as splendid, but they're out in the worm night, and so is Bernard Hall's, but she is indoors, Streeton's lady in an orchard has a long pretty dress, but she's as powerful as an apple-barrel, and the picture is really about the dig- nity of labor. as Is Tom Roberts' three men splitting timber and heaps. Walter it into chunky cubic Withers' outstanding land- scape, in the bruised, livid light of a coming storm, has more hard- working country housewives. Grace Cossington Smith, Roy de Maistre, Ralph Batson, Rah }Ir- ene, Peter Purves Smith and Frank Hinder are good for the early 20th Century, and a mar- vellous David Aspden brings it up to today, But the pre-Impressionists are as good as the romantic ladies: Water- falls by Buvelot and Chevalier, a goldminers' tent city by Von Guer- ard, and absolutely stunning, a "Bush Fire" by Von Guerard, with a mile -high wall of flames surging across an outback plain. Ballarat's 19th Century foreign pictures include a great muscular rape, which turned Norman Lind - art by danieci thomas say on to art, and a gentle land- scape by Buxton Knight which explains a lot about McCubbin and Withers. There are some fine medieval miniatures, and for the 20th Cen- tury in foreign art there is a typic- ally gentle kinetic piece by Julio Le Parr whioh scatters lights through the stairwell. Finally, there is a fascinating special collection of all the Lindsays - Norman, Lionel, Daryl, Ruby and Percy, who vies the beet. They were born at Creswick, over the hill from ,Ballarat. Geelong and Warrnambool 1100T11 are closed at present. Gee- long Is putting in new flooring. When it reopens, go there for Von Guerin -6, Walter Withers, Blamire Young and Paul Partos. Warrnambool is building a new gallery (which will probably be no good; two floors up, no lift, no stor- age). Its pictures are on loan to Hamilton, and the most interesting are by the Tasmanian, Robert Dow- ling a group of Aborigines, and a Biblical figure subjects. Hamilton TTS special glory is a large group of 18th Century English water- colors by Thomas Sandby. An extra storey will soon be built for them. Otherwise it is mainly decorative arts, from Roman glass and Greek pots, through 18th Cen- tury and Victorian porcelain to Ogle and Lalique glass. The paintings are very few, but include two splendid women by Bunny, one an actress, one a lady; landscapes by Chevalier and Von Guerard. What can't be seen anywhere else are pastoral landscapes by Thomas Clark, a little-known Melbourne artist of the 1850s to 1870s, who has a most tender feeling for blonde grass tussocks and grain, and for the shepherds, Aborigines and hat venters who use such land. Castlemaine A WONDERFUL Art -Deco buff, - ink, cactus bibs at the door. I. - aide, wonderful McCubbins kn.." Bunnys, and Tom Roberts' "Recon- ciliation" in a gum-tree glade. Good portraits by little-seen art- ists like Isaac Cohen, May Vale, James Quinn, Violet Teague. Early landscapes by Longstaff, done while staying with John Rus- set: wt. Belle -Ile, and just like John Russell. A Donald Laycock of 1963. full of promise, and still looking good, Nothing foreign. Bendirio TN the first room, the Neptune -A- Scott collection of "Corot," "Daubigny" and other big names of the 19th Century French paintings, not all as authentic as one would wish: Sisley and Purvis de Chavan- nes look all right. In another room of English Vic- toriana is a large and excellent "Homeless" by T. B. Kennington, a mother and child expiring on a rain -swept pavement, sentimental and sensitive and compassionate. Buvelot is lavishly present at Bendigo, but. the one great master- piece of Australian painting is a large Rupert Bunny, "The Sun Bath." White flesh, blue -shadowed flesh, a white hat, a Japanese screen with sharp -beaked birds set up in the garden to shelter these ).)chanting white women, and their pink roses. Bunny is a directly erotic painter. Also at Bendigo, an interior by Grace Cossington Smith, with an ecstatic threshhold, a Persian rug turned to coals of fire by the sun coming in from the garden outside.