Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

remarkable painting by Sir Sidney Nolan-Mrs Fraser and convict. The only suggestion I have, and I make this with due deference to the feminists, is to put things in their proper order of priority this week by changing its title to Convict and Mrs Fraser! It is my duty this evening to thank the donors on behalf of the Gallery and this I do with great pleasure. I thank you, Mr Mewing, Managing Director of David Jones Australia, and Mr Anderson, Queensland Managing Director, for your Company's generosity in presenting this splendid painting. I also thank Mr Rod O'Loan, a former Director of David Jones and now Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gallery, for the important part he played in this by making the initial approach to his old firm. It is a most appropriate way of marking David Jones's 150th anniversary, to give to the people of Queensland this fine example of Nolan's connection with Queensland. From his earliest visits here, Nolan was greatly impressed by his experience of the Queensland coast, which affected his painterly imagination for many years to come. This painting will be one of the highlights of our Australian collection. David Jones has had a long association with the arts. Sir Charles Lloyd Jones was not only a skilled landscape painter himself, but acted as a veritable antipodean Maecenas to others. I remember (when I was a young man in Sydney) his great house, Rosemont, as a centre of cultural and intellectual activity. Both he and, later, his younger son, also Charles, were Chairman of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The widow of his elder son, David, who tragically died so young, was largely responsible for Banyule in Melbourne becoming an extension of the National Gallery of Victoria to house the Manton Collection of Heidelberg paintings. The David Jones Gallery in Sydney was a trailblazer in its time, and its most famous Director, Robert Haines, was previously Director of the Queensland Art Gallery. So there is a strong nexus between David Jones, the arts and Queensland, and tonight we have another example of it. Thank you, the Management of David Jones, once again. I also want to thank the Premier, Mr Ahern, most warmly for agreeing, despite the many demands on his time and energy, to unveil this painting. This is the first time he has been able to carry out this task in the Gallery. Parliamentary duties made it impossible for him to unveil the fully clothed languorous beauties in our Bicentennial purchase, Rupert Bunny's Bathers. Tonight's task could be described as less demanding-to unveil Mrs Fraser with her attendant convict-if I may put it that way-in somewhat starker fashion with hardly a veil in sight and looking anything but languorous. Both paintings are well worth unveiling and each, in its own way, complements the other. We are most grateful to you, Mr Premier, for carrying out this evening's unveiling with such grace and elegance. I now have the pleasure of inviting you to view this marvellous painting, Mrs Fraser and convict, and also the twentieth-century section of 'The Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788-1988' in Galleries 12 and 13. Tonight you have the opportunity of comparing three of Nolan's finest works-this superb gift from David Jones which the Premier has unveiled tonight, as well as The death ofConstable Scanlon and the portrait of Em Malley. This introduction to just part of this marvellous exhibition will, I am sure, whet your appetite to return again and again. 51