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From the Collection: The Murray Griffin donation
By Neil Sharkey
The Australian War Memorial first commissioned Griffin as an Official War Artist on 9 October 1941 to document the activities of the 8th Australian Division. The formation had been tasked with bolstering the garrison in Singapore—the lynchpin of the British Empire in the ‘Far East’ or, to put it another way, Australia’s ‘Near North’. Griffin arrived at Singapore in early November, scarcely a month before Japanese troops came crashing over the Thai Malay frontier, on 8 December 1941.
Griffin produced many works between November and December 1941, but the most important of these works—ten oil paintings—were lost in transit after he posted them back to Australia during this uncertain, frantic period. Among the items offered to the Shrine, however, is a series of five undated charcoal drawings that likely pertain to this phase of the campaign.
The charcoals depict the same Australian soldier. His postures are cavalier and defiant, and he always clasps a Thompson sub-machinegun. The subject is rendered in wispy lines and smudges lending him a grim, distant and ghostly quality. His weapon is, however, drawn with hard, dark lines—uncompromising and exact. The soldier is otherworldly and superhuman but armed with the worldly (and deadly) technology required to defeat his foe. The drawings are belligerent and cocksure but perhaps, even at the time of their creation, rooted in aspiration rather than reality.
Despite a series of ambushes sprung on Japanese columns as they pushed south down Malaya’s truck roads, the enemy’s unrelenting momentum continued unabated. Murray and other Australian and Allied troops had no choice but to withdraw across the Straits of Johor to Singapore in late January 1942. Fortress Singapore fell on 15 February 1942 and Griffin became a prisoner-of-war with 15,000 of his countrymen and tens of thousands of British and Indian comrades.
Griffin spent the next three and half years at Changi, creating some 40 paintings and more than 150 drawings and sketches. As well as depictions of the fierce fighting on the Malayan Peninsula and Singapore between December and
February 1942, Griffin also portrayed everyday life in the camps—the struggles, horrors, banalities, and occasional triumphs. The natural beauty and glorious colours of Malaya shine throughout. The lion’s share of the works Griffin created during the war was handed to the Australian War Memorial at war’s end.
The works of art offered to the Shrine in 2023 are therefore significant in that they are pieces that Griffin retained for himself. The charcoals, previously mentioned, were studies for an oil portrait (also among the donated items) which hung in Griffin’s beautiful Walter Burley Griffin-designed house in Eaglemont, Victoria until very recently. This work, painted in the camp after Griffin’s internment, differs from the charcoals in one key respect. In contrast to its charcoal prototypes, the painting’s subject is rendered in fine detail, a romantic, melancholic and even fragile-looking figure. The cradled weapon, on the other hand, has been rendered inconspicuous—‘inert’—a vague ‘Tommy-Gun’ shaped brown mess.
Griffin’s work celebrated the achievements and ingenuity of his fellow captives. He recorded prisoners’ efforts to improve their lot by producing concert parties and other entertainments and by manufacturing artificial limbs, clothing, cooking utensils and medical equipment. He depicted many of the personalities of the camp, including senior British and Australian officers, members of the concert parties, and the army doctors and surgeons responsible for keeping so many of the men alive.
Griffin’s most famous works are perhaps those portraying episodes gleaned from the stories told by the men who had returned from forced labouring on the Thai-Burma Railway. These works detail the diseased and emaciated condition of the survivors and the mistreatment they suffered and often evoke the religious symbolism of Christ’s suffering.
When Murray’s original art supplies ran out, he improvised pigments using clay and painted on plywood and Masonite salvaged from demolished buildings. A beautiful wooden box of pastels inscribed with the legend ‘V Murray Griffin Official War Artist’ is included in the donation. Interestingly, the pastels appear to have been seldom used. Murray’s favourite medium at this time was lampblack, an easily obtainable black watercolour pigment derived from soot and charcoal. Many of Griffin’s most famous works—including the ‘Thai Burma Railway’ and the ‘Inventions’ series were largely crafted in this medium.
The Shrine donation includes two of the celebrated ‘lampblacks’. Both depict the inside of Griffin’s barracks bunkhouse. The first illustrates his immediate workspace—his desk, easel, brushes, and so forth—set up at the foot of his cot. The second portrays six men gathered around the bunkhouse dining table. Above the group hover three disembodied portraits. These, one assumes, are the roommates unavailable to sit for the group portrait (one being Griffin himself!). It is perhaps easy to surmise why Griffin held these back from his initial transfer of art to the Australian War Memorial in 1946.
In addition to the donation of 17 works, the Griffins have also entrusted the Shrine with personal effects and keepsakes from this formative period in Griffin’s life. The prisoner-of-war identity tag, as well as the collar badges and permits that identified Griffin as a war artist, have been included in the donation, as have a few desperate letters exchanged between Murray and his family during his captivity. An original self-penned manuscript, which formed the basis of a shorter published work, details Griffin’s war years and will likewise provide a boon for future research.
Visitors to the Shrine will notice the installation of a new exhibit in the Second World War that showcases some of the Griffin collection treasures and celebrates the role of Official War Artists and their invaluable role in documenting the experiences of Australia’s fighting men and women abroad.
Neil Sharkey is a Curator at the Shrine of Remembrance.
